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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.'"
Every dollar they price this below $250 increases the likelihood of me buying it by roughly 1%. =)
Microsoft and Sony have given Nintendo some wiggle room on price here, so I think $199 will be the minimum price for the console through the end of the launch year. I wouldn't be surprised to see it go for as much as $299 at launch, or even $350 if it comes with a strong bundle.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I am planning on buying at least two of these. One for the family and another for the local children's hospital. I think this controller will really help in physical therapy dept. with the rehabilitation of children. If they offer games that appeal to older adults it could also be a Xmas gift for the grandparents/nursing home too! The boomer generation is the largest growing market and as of yet has been untapped. I think the people at Nintendo deserve a raise for this revolutionary product (pun intended)!
This article was written last week. I still believe that Nintendo was all but ready to throw out the $200 figure until Sony announced their price at E3 (Nintendo was quoted as being quite surprised that Sony chose to announce their price so early, and everyone else was shocked at the number). Now Nintendo is going back to discuss the possibility of a $250-$300 price point. After all, their whole model is the appearance of affordability for casual gamers, and $250 is still LESS THAN HALF of a PS3 and considerable cheaper than a 360.
If it turns out to be above $250, I sure hope they include an extra controller and perhaps some sample games to show off functionality (Wii Sports, for example, seems fun but doesn't strike me as a game I would pay $50 for)
Look at what nintendo did with the name wii itself: a new, original (and many would say bad) name for a console.. so they released it well before E3 and let gamers blow off steam about it in advance so it didn't blot out their showing at the event itself with controversy. Hell, I think that's why Sony released its price figures early, so gamers would have time to get used to the idea of having to blow 700 bucks on a console. With good news on the other hand, its to their advantage to release the price info as late in the year as possible, so as to maximize the "wow, wii is friggin cheap!!" glow that will drive gamers into the stores and wiis off the shelf. So my predicition is that the price will be released late in the game, right before when the system is going to be released, and that it will be on the low end of the price ranges we're all quoting here.
I didn't say that, actually I very specifically said that there "was some improvement, just not as much as the others."
What part of that statement is not true?
It's not just that the Wii is slower than the 360 or PS3, it also doesn't have a lot of the modern features either of those have (it also doesn't have the incredibly convoluted PPU system they have either, but how difficult the hardware is to program for is another argument altogether). The GPU doesn't have pixel or vertex shader hardware, do you know what the last PC GPU that had a fixed function T&L pipeline was? ATI 7xxx series and Nvidia GeForce 2. On a 90nm process, you could make a GPU of that complexity for very cheap and get it to run far faster than the original 7xxx or GF2. I'm sure there are some console tricks include like in the original Flipper, but don't think you are getting the equivalent of a modern mid-range GPU to the 360/PS3 high-end. It is drastically lower class. The CPU is nearly an off the shelf component too. Lastly, supplying only a minimal amount of memory will also lower costs. They don't have to care about high res, because they won't even connect to a high res device. I don't think any of that matters to the success of the platform, I actually think that Nintendo was really smart. They have learned from the Gameboy (and to a much lesser extent, the GameCube). While you can grab headlines with selling jaw-dropping effects, price and games move units. At the end of the day, I would rather be the 3rd place hardware vendor with the 1st place sales sheet and Nintendo feels the same way.
No previous console generation was only twice as fast/capable as the one before it.
Given the large number of games shown at E3 that require the nunchaku I think it's very likely that it will be included with the console.
What capabilities does the Wii command that are unachievable on the GameCube today? I think nintendo is just releasing the obligatory new platform as a method to increase saturation of it's 'wiimote' controller. They should have just bundled the controller with whatever handful of games they plan to have it work with and called it a day. Consider:
Wii is hardly more powerful than gamecube. GC 1.5 indeed. Partial Wii Specs vs. GC Specs>
They are releasing AAA GC titles simultaneously with Wii anyway.
Wii has 4 GC controller ports and will accept GC discs as well as Wii ones.
What we really have here, just like GBA SP and DS Lite, is the GC Wii, with a pack-in wand controller and ethernet port.
Mod up.
Very important to realize there is limited or no inflation with electronics.
At $50 - $70 a game, people think twice, 3, 10 times before they buy ... at $20, they'll buy one a week.
Many new DS games are $35, so I doubt that Nintendo would sell a console game for less than a portable one.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Dude stop being such a fanboy your posts are starting to get freaky. How about you start posting the good news poping out for PS3 like the fact that all the rumors you posted are untrue (like the no wireless controllers) or that the japanese think the PS3 stole E3. I mean you dont have to, but it would make you look like less of a Nintendo fanboy.
Assuming that the rumored unit pricing is true...
At least Nintendo remembers why people buy videogame consoles instead of (or in addition to) general purpose computers. People bought all of the most successful game systems because they were a cheap and easy to entertain your kids, NOT because they were higher powered - consoles are all low powered compared to loaded gamer PC's. Of course, for every generation of game systems there is competition about who has the best spec's and, more importantly, the best games, but every time a company forgets that the most important thing is to be cheap and easy, they end up making an absurdly over-spec'd, over-priced, overly complex system that fails in the marketplace because they chased after the high-end niche market instead of the mainstream.
Winning Systems: NES, GameBoy, PlayStation, PlayStation 2 (pushing the high-end of pricing at launch, but came down).
Losing Systems: Intellivision, Atari Lynx, NEC Turbo Graphix, 3DO, DreamCast, Xbox. All tried to sell more functionality for more money than people were willing to pay.
When I look at the next generation systems, the Wii looks like the NES and GameBoy - a cheap and easy way to entertain your kids. And Sony and MS's next boxes look a lot like 3DO - great spec's, but wiped out by more pragmatic competition.
Sony's only hope is that they can somehow convince people to buy PS3's as their HD DVD player, which might get home theater enthusiasts to buy PS3's. The Xbox 360 seems doomed to me, once its real competition arrives.
My prediction is that the Wii will outsell the PS3 and Xbox 360 by massive amounts, because Nintendo is (1) targeting the mainstream market, and (2) focusing on gameplay, innovating in areas like the controllers, and their downloadable game service, that don't price them out of their market. The risk I see to the Wii is that if game publishers don't think it'll do well, they won't sell games for it, hurting it in the general marketplace. But if Nintendo is committed to the Wii's success, I think it'll do decently well just on the strength that you can buy it (if rumors are true). As a parent, I think I'm more likely to buy a Wii for $200 just to play whatever the next cool Mario game is, rather than to spend $4-500 (or more?!) for the competition. Heck, the Wii controller is the only interesting thing I've read about any of these units, and it's on the cheapest one...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Don't forget... I read somewhere that the GameCube controllers will work on the Wii. Talk about savings. That way I don't need to rush out and buy a bunch of controllers. Oh, and the Cube games will work on it too. Bonus. Sounds like Nintendo is ramping up for a winner. I have to say I hope to see stores start stocking more than 2 shelves of Nintendo games compared to a whole aisle of the other systems. As a Cube owner it's depressing to have poor selection, or see a commercial for a sweet game only to see the tag line: Only for PC, PS2 & Xbox. Game selection and price will be the KEY factors, not specs.
With the buzz the Wii has right now (and hopefully at release), I fully expect Nintendo will go whole hog and release the Wii at $299. Three to six months later, it'll drop to $249, and six months to a year later, $199. Simply put, I think it'll sell at that higher price point, even to non-gamers, because I think they are putting out a great system. Particularly, I think the launch titles will sell it even at the higher price, and Nintendo has never been one to turn away money. If they start at $199, they'll have nowhere down to go... I don't think they wanna sell it at $149, because they would be losing money per box.
Unlike Sony and MS, Nintendo prefers to MAKE money on the boxes too, not just on the games. Since price cuts later in a units lifetime boost sales, they need to start somewhere high enough that they CAN cut prices, and still make money on the box. So I predict a starting point of $249 or even $299. I'm budgeting for $300, plus another $300 to buy a bunch of launch titles. Screw the PS3, I want my lightsaber... *cough*, I mean, I want my Wii remote.
Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.