UBM TechInsights VP of technical intelligence David Carey told Eurogamer that the $250 Nintendo 3DS that you’re going to pick up this weekend cost about $100 to make. This is what they gathered from their preliminary estimate, mind you. Carey says that this is about $15 more than what it cost to build the DSi at launch. It’s really hard to look at it this way, but it seems like you could say that $15 more in cost could have added 3D capabilities to the DSi. Man, that makes the $250 I’ve already dropped sting a bit.
We know there’s a bit more to the 3DS than that, though.Gamespotreminds us that we now get that lovely 3.53-inch 3D-enabled top screen and that not-so-lovely 3.02-inch touch-panel bottom screen. For processing, a PICA200 GPU spits out a healthy 200Mhz for better-than-DS graphics. When you consider the accessories you get (dock, AR cards, stylus) and the other built-in goodies (three cameras, a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope, analog control nub, memory slot and 2GB card) $250 doesn’t sound as bad.
