Speculate Wii's BOM

3. Dual-format slot-loading drive
(and I think 3 is significantly underestimated).

My four year old DVD burner can read small thouse small 3inch (or whatever it is) DVD discs.
You can buy a bran new DVD burner (which is obviously more expensive than just the drive) for $30 on newegg.com

What do you suggest as price then?
 
My four year old DVD burner can read small thouse small 3inch (or whatever it is) DVD discs.
You can buy a bran new DVD burner (which is obviously more expensive than just the drive) for $30 on newegg.com

What do you suggest as price then?

Is it a SLOT loader though? All tray CD-ROM type of transports from the early 80's can read mini-discs. It's the slot type of transport that I think is new.
 
What I meant was who manufactures the drive, not who assembles the drive into the console. The drive is likely made by a drive manufacturer then put into the Wii console by Flextronics or some other EMS. For example we know the DVD-ROM drive in the X360 is made by LG.

It's still Panasonic/Matsushita, just like the cube.

Is it a SLOT loader though? All tray CD-ROM type of transports from the early 80's can read mini-discs. It's the slot type of transport that I think is new.

Slot loaders aren't that new, though I can't really guess what their mass production costs might be. I don't recall even a laptop line making as much use of them as the Wii's, so the Wii may be the largest application of that drive type ever. It may be they are substantially more expensive and thus why we haven't seen them much, but both wii and ps3 have them, don't they?
 
Slot loaders aren't that new, though I can't really guess what their mass production costs might be. I don't recall even a laptop line making as much use of them as the Wii's, so the Wii may be the largest application of that drive type ever. It may be they are substantially more expensive and thus why we haven't seen them much, but both wii and ps3 have them, don't they?

No, I meant Slot-loader that can read (well technically FEED in) mini-discs. My bad but I was referring to that type just before that statement.
 
No, I meant Slot-loader that can read (well technically FEED in) mini-discs. My bad but I was referring to that type just before that statement.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever encountered a slot loader that couldn't take mini-discs?
 
Slot loaders aren't that new, though I can't really guess what their mass production costs might be. I don't recall even a laptop line making as much use of them as the Wii's, so the Wii may be the largest application of that drive type ever.
Virtually every car stereo made in the late 80's/90's had that type of CD drive.
 
Just out of curiosity, have you ever encountered a slot loader that couldn't take mini-discs?

Never had any personal experience. I have an older slot loading DVD-ROM (Pioneer) but never tried to stick in any of my mini-discs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_CD

Compatibility

Most tray-loading CD devices have 2 'wells'; one sized for a normal CD, and a smaller, deeper well for MiniCDs to fit into.


Devices that feature an opening lid have no problem with MiniCDs, as the disc can simply be placed onto the spindle as with a normal CD.


Some vertically aligned tray-loading devices, such as the PlayStation 2 when placed vertically, require an adaptor for use with 80 mm CDs.


Slot-loading CD drives are generally incompatible, (the iMac of 1999 is an exception), but adapters are available that one can snap an 80 mm round miniCD into to extend the width to match that of a 120 mm CD, and thus work in many slot-loading devices. There are no adapters for business-card sized CDs.


The Nintendo Gamecube uses 80mm discs for all software.
This was essentially my understanding. No, I didn't write it. ;)
 
Virtually every car stereo made in the late 80's/90's had that type of CD drive.

Aren't car lines usually made in the 10,000s of thousands, not 10s of millions? I may be technically right just on the matter that "all cars" aren't a single product line.

This was essentially my understanding. No, I didn't write it.

Even if correct, it establishes that slot loading mini disc tech has been available since at least 1999, that's even older than Wii's gpu technology.
 
Even if correct, it establishes that slot loading mini disc tech has been available since at least 1999, that's even older than Wii's gpu technology.

Sure, I wasn't saying it was necessarily the first, but it IS different from most slot loaders and thus might not be given the price break of "normal" off the shelf ROM readers.
 
Sure, I wasn't saying it was necessarily the first, but it IS different from most slot loaders and thus might not be given the price break of "normal" off the shelf ROM readers.

Supposedly, Nintendo is already close to 4 million wiis. I think they've produced enough on their own to benefit from large scale production, even if the drive isn't an off the shelf drive with new firmware. Though I'd be surprised if Panasonic/Masushita didn't produce an equivalent drive somewhere in their product line up.
 
From that quote it seems to me they're pricing as low as possible.

What do we expect him to say, "We are making a killing!" They could see they were gonna sell all 4M units. Demand was high, competition price points were even higher. Cha-ching. And it helps cover all the advertising and R&D costs as well -- stuff typically missed in counting BOM, because BOM doesn't really account for "cost to bring to market".
 
What do we expect him to say, "We are making a killing!" They could see they were gonna sell all 4M units. Demand was high, competition price points were even higher. Cha-ching. And it helps cover all the advertising and R&D costs as well -- stuff typically missed in counting BOM, because BOM doesn't really account for "cost to bring to market".

:p Did you see when that statement was made? I wouldn't make it again at this point in time. So I agree, It's pretty obvious it's not priced as low as the manufacturing costs.
 
:p Did you see when that statement was made? I wouldn't make it again in this point in time. So I agree, It's pretty obvious it's not priced as low as the manufacturing costs.

Shot me, I was late ;) As you probably know... /me disappears again...
 
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