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Merrill Lynch Predicts $200 Wii
Burlap writes "In a story at Forbes, Merrill Lynch predicts that Nintendo will severely undercut the competition with a $200 price point on the Wii." From the article: "An executive from SEGA, one of Nintendo's largest publishers, told Forbes.com on Tuesday that he expects the Wii to sell for less than $200. Post said the Nintendo machine, which features a wireless controller that responds to players' body movements, 'will appeal to a broad demographic of both hard-core and casual gamers.'"
Why do you assume they can't make them for just under $200? This is, after all, little more than a refresh to the GameCube with an improved controller. You could almost argue that what Nintendo is really doing is more like how Sony re-released the PSOne to replace the original PS. Same hardware, just much cheaper to make. This time around, there is definitely some improvement...but nothing like the others are making. I imagine the yields on their CPU/GPUs are nearly perfect, plus everything is nice and low transistor count on a modern process. I think they are laughing all the way to the bank with the 90% of consumers who DON'T have an HDTV.
Charging the same or only a bit less than the base 360 is NOT the way they want to play this thing. They want to be a little bit more than an impulse buy, but not a major investment like the others (which if you figure in an HDTV, they are...without the better display, they aren't any better than the Wii).