[Revo] Thoughts: Wii Price, Release Date, More

[.:|Physalis|:.]

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I was jumping around this crazy thing we call the Inter-Web the other night and tripped over a reader post that asked the question, what does Matt think of the Wii's price and release date? Turns out, I speculated a lot about these very topics prior to the day they became official, but have said little on the subject since. I wasn't intentionally ignoring these issues -- it just never occurred to me to editorialize about them. And since it's probably a little late for a full-blown article, here we are on the blogs.

Welcome.

So I'll tell you exactly what I told both Perrin Kaplan and Reggie Fils-Aime when they asked me the same question, which is, I believe Wii is $50 too expensive and three weeks too late.

As a gamer, I want Wii to sell for $200 for a number of reasons. It has about one tenth the processing prowess and one fifth the RAM of, say Xbox 360, and it also lacks a true hard drive. It doesn't play DVDs. It doesn't play music CDs. Yes, you read that correctly and yes, it's true. In fact, in many ways, it could be called a turbo-charged GameCube. So why the $249 price point?

Well, there are certainly reasons for it. It's easy to shrug off Wii as the least powerful of the three consoles, but consider what Nintendo has done. Wii is roughly half the size of GameCube and it still packs twice the power. It has roughly double the processing prowess, approximately double the RAM, an additional 512MBs of useable flash memory, built in 802.11b/g wireless capabilities and a full docking station for GameCube controllers. The console is backward compatible, in fact, with every GCN title ever made. And I haven't even mentioned its Wii Channels system or, most importantly, the Wii controller, which could represent one of the biggest hardware innovations the industry has seen in years.

Still, Nintendo says it's going after the mainstream audience so I want to see it really do that from the start, and a $249 price point is not quite mainstream enough. This is especially true when you consider that many Wii games are designed to be enjoyed by multiple players and each separately sold Wii remote will cost buyers $39.99 plus another $19.99 for the nunchuk attachment. Add in a classic controller or two and all of a sudden we're well beyond the $300 price point – just so that mom and dad can play Wario Ware.

But here's the thing: Nintendo is a business, and selling Wii for $249 through the holiday is a smart business move. As much as I'd prefer it were cheaper, even I recognize that. The Big N will ship four million units through December and the hardcore crowd will devour the supply in no time. Nintendo's leaders have said that Wii will turn a profit from the start, which is something that neither Microsoft nor Sony could hope to do with their respective consoles. And when the competition finally does make an aggressive move to lower the price of their systems, Nintendo can drop the price of Wii to the magic sub-$200 point and go from there.

All of that noted, for $249 I was hoping that Nintendo would have at least included the classic controller with its Wii bundle, too. Wii Sports is certainly nice – and it will go a long way to introducing people to the new controller – but since we'll be downloading Virtual Console games from the start, too, the classic would've been a beauty of a pack-in.

As for the launch date, it's a mystery. I know what Nintendo was thinking, which is that it needn't worry about Sony because it has so few units to deliver. Only 400,000 PS3s will be available in the North American region when the system launches, which sure isn't a lot. Nintendo is so confident that Sony won't make much of an impact that it went ahead and moved Wii's release date to two days after PS3's, giving itself more time to hit the street date with a wealth of units.

But I still don't get the approach. Not entirely. The Big N clearly has a lot of units coming in. It could have launched earlier and with a steady supply.

Sony is not the only company to think about. Microsoft is out there, too, and there will be no shortage of Xbox 360s this holiday. Neither will there be any shortage of great Xbox 360 games. I think it would have been more advantageous for Nintendo to get out earlier in an attempt to make the public aware of Wii sooner rather than later.

Even with all of this being true, it's not as though I believe Nintendo has made some crippling mistake. In truth, I think Wii is going to perform phenomenally this holiday. I also believe that it has a solid chance of surprising everybody and gaining much more market share than anticipated, particularly in Japan. Unlike GameCube, I think Wii has a chance for the number one spot.

As a quick aside, I really love the Wii Channels. This is a great interface and I can tell you that I plan on it using it for news updates and weather forecasts. I'm not so sure about photos and Web browsing – I have iPhoto, Photoshop and Safari and I'm pretty sure all of them are more flexible – but I still believe it's a neat addition to the package. And, of course, the Virtual Console setup looks sweet indeed. So I'm really hoping that Nintendo makes the Wii Channels a topic in its marketing and advertising. Maybe something like this...

"Whatever your want. Whatever you need. Wii Channel it."

[Turrican3]

Molte cose mi sembrano estremente ragionevoli.

L'unica cosa che non condivido è l'auspicata inclusione del Classic Controller, IMHO invece hanno fatto benissimo a fare il bundle con la tech-demo, ho sempre detto e continuo a pensare tuttora che rendere quel pad tutto sommato tradizionale di serie avrebbe costituito un pericolosissimo messaggio disincentivante alle software house, che invece così saranno "costrette" ad impegnarsi in maniera creativa sul Wii-mote.

[Erpecco]

Concordo col Turry per il pad classico.
Per il resto l'articolo è ragionevole, Nintendo punta a guadagnare da subito, ma come la storia ci insegna Nintendo qualche cazzata la fa ad ogni generazione... per questa l'errore potrebbe essere l'eccessiva sicurezza e quindi un prezzo troppo alto in occidente?    :mmmm:

Cmq prevedo il Wii numero 1 in Giappone, negli altri mercati risultati migliori del Cubo ma non da leader. Quindi 1 in Jap, 2 in Europa e 3 in Usa.   

[Turrican3]

Cmq prevedo il Wii numero 1 in Giappone, negli altri mercati risultati migliori del Cubo ma non da leader. Quindi 1 in Jap, 2 in Europa e 3 in Usa.

(è bello vedere che ti accontenti di così poco! ;))

[Dante85]

Sn veramente curioso di vedere sto Wii in Jap come andrà, se sarà mania come il Ds oppure Floppone