We all thought Nintendo were fools for hyping a new Switch and then revealing it’s just a minor upgrade, with an OLED screen and a slight storage increase, the company has actually pulled off a mighty good scam.
Bloomberg did a breakdown of the manufacturing costs, and found that a 7-inch OLED display from Samsung will cost Nintendo $3 to $5 per unit (all prices in USD), increasing the internal storage to 64GB is an extra $3.50, and the other added components, including console stand and LAN port, add “a few dollars more.”
All in all, the new Nintendo Switch OLED will cost Nintendo roughly $10 per unit more to manufacture.
JB Hi-Fi is currently selling the Nintendo Switch for $AUD449, while you can preorder the OLED version for $AUD539.
Convert that USD$10 to Australian dollars, and that’s $13.40 per unit. The price difference, however, is $90, which means there is a tasty $76.60 profit there, in addition to whatever the previous profit margin was.
Game over!