According to Forbes who cites David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Securities, Nintendo is getting approximately $6 of operating profit for each Wii sold. With nearly 35 million Wii units sold, this amounts to nearly $200 million on hardware sales alone, without operating costs figured in.
Forbes also mentions that Nintendo sells 60% of software for Wii itself which is much more than the competition is doing currently.
Yes, I’ve seen $6 lattes around my area, I do live in Washington after all. As for the estimate, I’d say at this point it’s slightly out of date due to the system being a few years old now. That should bring costs down a bit.
To me, $6 seems like a low profit. But if they’ve made 200 million and can’t keep the consoles in stock, they are doing something right!