Expected TI shipping

[Panopticon]

Overhead costs when manufacturing a product are very expensive, and the smaller the production run, the more it'll cost the consumer in the end. You have to consider tooling, assembly, painting/silk screening, labor, lighting, heat, and rent on the buildings in which to do these things; and this is still granting that the keybed, knobs, and switches are subcontracted. And you still haven't factored in a team of 3 or 4 R&D guys to develop the thing for two years, nor writing/print/press of the manual, nor the box and shipping materials. You still need QC and end-user support after that. Access could probably drop the price up to 10% and still stay afloat, but they most likely don't produce enough Viri to drop the price more than that. Sure, there are VA's out there for less, but there's a reason the Virus is the industry leader, and if they dropped the price too much, they'd have to cut too many corners on the manufacture side of things. I personally would be really surprised if they shipped more than 200,000 units.

Microsoft actually LOSES money on every Xbox they sell, the caveat for them is that they make it back from the game manufacturers who have to pay licensing fees for every copy of a game they sell. It costs a lot more than one would think to deliver a quality tech product, I'm just happy Access delivers a good one.