Speculate Wii's BOM

[Shifty Geezer]

We've had BOM threads for XB360 and PS3, but not Wii. That's discrimination! And I'm just plain curious as to what that little box costs to manufacture. I know very little about chip prices for sure, so I can't really get anywhere close to a real BOM, but to me, I'm seeing a 16mm^2 CPU and thinking "That's about a 20th of Cell's size, so at least it'll be a 20th the price and likely much cheaper. If Cell costs a staggering $200, Broadway'll cost $10." I thus factor Broadway being $10 or less to make. Flipper was about 50 M transistors. Let's double that for Wii...100M, and where would the pricing be? From what's said elsewhere, maybe $50 peak??

Together, I make the CPU+GPU and to be around $60 tops. Add in a dual-format optical drive for...another $50? Odds and sods at $30. That looks like the Wii (excluding Wiimote) has a BOM of c. $150 to me, maybe even less.

I'm probably way off the mark. Anyhow, I think this'd be a good figure to narrow down so we can see how hard Nintendo are pushing for profitability from the hardware, and how that may have influenced design decisions.

 

[Rangers]

CPU+GPU=next to nothing. I mean, really nothing.

The cost of the unit is tied up in those motion sensing devices. Being so new to be mass produced.

The thing is real cost, meaning not marketing slotted cost, of even big chips is pretty low, like $40. I cant imagine how cheap wii chips are, ESPECIALLY if they truly simply overclocked GC chips.

Most BOM analysis of 360 put the GPU~$100 IIRC, and PS3 even less, RSX tabbed at $70, even as low as $50. RSX is a very small chip as G71 is. And without the whole dual die of Xenos it's even simpler to manufacture.
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Sunset Boulevard Residence Pattaya

 

[hey69]

optidal drive would be much lower then 50$ ... arround the 15-20 mark

 

[assen]

Overclocked Gamecube... $50
Motion-sensing controller... $30
The power to convince millions of people that waving a stick in the air is fun and innovative... priceless!

Some things in life are bought with money... but for others you need a reality-distortion field that would make Steve Jobs turn Xbox green with envy.

 

[Rangers]

Overclocked Gamecube... $50
Motion-sensing controller... $30
The power to convince millions of people that waving a stick in the air is fun and innovative... priceless!

Some things in life are bought with money... but for others you need a reality-distortion field that would make Steve Jobs turn Xbox green with envy.

Seriously though, I dont think Nintendo is stupid, and they dont like to lose money on hardware. Knowing those two facts, I think it's fair to say they felt they needed the $249 price point, and didn't do it just for the hell of since everybody was pulling for $199. That tells me the Wii hardware is not dirt cheap, cheap yes, but not cheap enough they felt $199 was no problem.
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Live sex

 

[Shifty Geezer]

optidal drive would be much lower then 50$ ... arround the 15-20 mark

With dual format support? Do normal slot drives take 3" discs okay?

 

[hey69]

hm good point, didnt think about that.
how the hell do you put a 3inch disc inside? does it eat it automaticly? i dont think thats going to take a major pricehit

 

[Ali-G]

We cant work this out until we know whats in the machine. So we'll have to wait.

 

[Rolf N]

I think most slot-in drives support the small discs, because 3" is actually a standard format for CD audio singles. It just isn't very relevant apparently.

You can think of the mechanism as a trapezoid-shaped drop below the "main" disc slot. If the disc is small enough it will be pushed into this opening with some pressure, and will be centered properly along the way.

 

[iNoV]

Is it the software like all the channel stuff and the free online that could be driving up the price??

 

[Teasy]

Overclocked Gamecube... $50
Motion-sensing controller... $30
The power to convince millions of people that waving a stick in the air is fun and innovative... priceless!

Some things in life are bought with money... but for others you need a reality-distortion field that would make Steve Jobs turn Xbox green with envy.

As hilarious as that was (my sides almost split.. ) lets be serious for a moment. Wii is not just an overclocked GC. Even the most conservative rumoured specs at the moment point to Wii having around four times the amount of ram as GC and over three times the memory bandwidth. Then you have the more compact case, extra ports (USB ect), built in flash ram, self loading multi function drive, built in WiFi. That's before we even consider the additions to the CPU and GPU, of which I'm sure there will be some. You're being extremely naive if you think you can put all that in a case for $50. Also you think the main controller, nunchuck (both with motion sensing) and the sensor bar costs $30?, where do you think Nintendo got this technology?, Mars?

I'll wait until we know exactly what Wii is before I make a guess at its cost, though I'll still probably be way off

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Then we have the controller, $30 for the main controller, nunchuck (both with motion sensing) and the sensor bar?, where did Nintendo get this technology?, Mars?

The Wii remote retails for $40 US. Nunchuck's $20 US. Unless Nintendo are selling these at a loss, we can take that as at least cost price. For the Wiimote+Nunchuck that comes with the $250 box, we could say $60 for the controllers. The IR sensor shouldn't be at all expensive as it's a few IR diodes. The chips for $50 seems a fair maximum. The DVD drive apparently doesn't need t be customized particularly according to zeckensack, so that might be around $20. We've something like 64 MB 1T-SRAM and other RAM...perhaps altogether the price of 128 MB GDDR2??

CPU : $10 - estimate
GPU : $40 - more of a guess
DVD : £20 - estimate
Controller : $60 - retail price

Total for above - $130

If that's fair, Nintendo must in the region of $50+ profit per unit? If the machine sells (which it will) then they've hit upon a great business strategy for gaming!

 

[fearsomepirate]

Don't forget that someone has to pay the R&D costs, and that the online service is free to consumers. The price will certainly drop after R&D is paid off, but Connect24 will be a continuous cost. So whatever it costs Nintendo to run Connect24 has to be factored into the unit price on Wii. Also, we have to know the quality of the IR diodes in the sensor bar to know how much that's costing.

Remember that Nintendo started taking a small loss on Gamecube when they dropped the price to $99. And the Cube had a much cheaper disc drive, much cheaper controller ports, and no networking hardware. And I'm going to guess that by 2003, manufacturing the silicon was as cheap as it was ever going to get. So what we've got in Wii:

1. Gamecube-ish CPU & GPU
2. 88 MB 1T-SRAM
3. Dual-format slot-loading drive
4. 512 MB flash memory
5. 4 Gamecube controller ports.
6. 2 USB ports.
7. 2-way digital/analog A/V port.
8. Higher quality, glossy case (incl mobo, heatsinks, and fan).
9. PSU
10. Stand
11. 1 SD card port
12. Connect24 service
13. 1 Remote + Nunchuk
14. Wii Sports
15. WiFi
16. Bluetooth
17. Sensor bar (don't forget diodes, housing, cable, fab cost, and any silicon needed)

So far, people are really only accounting for 1, 3, and 13 (and I think 3 is significantly underestimated). Now even if the rest of the things cost only an average of $2 apiece, that's another $28 you're not adding onto the price.

 

[INKster]

8. Higher quality, glossy case (incl mobo, heatsinks, and fan).

"Glossy cases" means nothing, other than shiny mirrored images.
It may *look* higher quality, but the actual plastic quality may be lower than Gamecube's, not to mention resistance to scratches, etc...

 

[Acert93]

I think we need some very firm final confirmation on what is in Wii (especially some of the more expensive parts, like the GPU and CPU and exact memory configuration) before we can go about a BOM. With the 360 and PS3 we had the advantage of knowing general die sizes & transistor counts, suppliers in many cases, and many of the parts were either known parts (manufacture wise) in the industry or had readily available means to calculate general cost... and some good investor speculation (like diode costs) to fill in the blanks. I am not sure we know enough about Wii to get to this point yet... lest I believe at some point it was stated that Nintendo was not losing money on the unit.

 

[Acert93]

"Glossy cases" means nothing, other than shiny mirrored images.
It may *look* higher quality, but the actual plastic quality may be lower than Gamecube's, not to mention resistance to scratches, etc...

I am going with fearsome on this for 2 reasons:

1. Nintendo has a long history of excellent build quality.

2. Nintendo knows that a large portion of their target audience is children, which requires high quality construction.

 

[fearsomepirate]

"Glossy cases" means nothing, other than shiny mirrored images.
It may *look* higher quality, but the actual plastic quality may be lower than Gamecube's, not to mention resistance to scratches, etc...

Nintendo doesn't make junk. And even a cheap case costs more than $0.00 to manufacture, which what everyone is currently pricing it at.

 

[assen]

Ok, let's try more serious then:

1. Gamecube-ish CPU & GPU $50
2. 88 MB 1T-SRAM include above, they're not separate chips AFAIK
3. Dual-format slot-loading drive $25
4. 512 MB flash memory $10

11. 1 SD card port
5. 4 Gamecube controller ports.
6. 2 USB ports.
10. Stand
7. 2-way digital/analog A/V port. $10

8. Higher quality, glossy case (incl mobo, heatsinks, and fan). $5
9. PSU $5
12. Connect24 service ??? no idea how that would be ammortized...
13. 1 Remote + Nunchuk $50
14. Wii Sports $2 - we're talking BOM here, not covering development costs
15. WiFi
16. Bluetooth $5
17. Sensor bar (don't forget diodes, housing, cable, fab cost, and any silicon needed) $10

Totals up to $160-180. Split the difference to $250 between Nintendo and the retailer.

The free online service might be ammortized by raising the license cost for each MP game - e.g. $10 instead of $9.

 

[darkblu]

assen, (since you mentioned you were tying to be serious) - neither the cube had one chip for CPU, GPU and memory, not does the wii - at least we know as much from one mosys' press release. so you can throw in some memory chips costs in there too.

 

[Fox5]

Well, we know that Nintendo is making a profit on Wii, and we know they typically price the consoles around cost, so since the Japanese price is ~$230 US, I'd say the total cost of the console is probably somewhere between that and $200.