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Nintendo Announces Japanese Wii Price
Wowzer writes "Nintendo has revealed to Famitsu.com, at the company's recent press conference unveiling its financial results, that Wii would arrive in Japanese stores with a maximum price tag of 25,000 yen. After taking in account various factors, the conversion to other currencies comes down to a launch price of: 225 dollars, 225 euros, and 150 pounds." Update: 05/25 13:45 GMT by Z : GamesIndustry.biz points out they hope to ship 6 million units by next March, and an Opera exec has said you can browse the internets with the wiimote.
if u can't afford to buy any of the next generation consoles, all the previous generation consoles and their games will be dirty cheap. the gamecube should drop to 70bux the ps2 maybe down to 99 when the ps3 comes out, i dunno about the old xbox though, since that might just go away completely.
so for poor folks you can have alot of good fun with all the A+ games from the old ps2 and gamecube.
No Japanese game company can be taken seriously that doesn't price its console under $850....
Oh don't get me wrong, I never suggested that what we want or even need is what MS and Sony are proporting to stuff down our throats. I suggested that there is indeed a market for convergeance devices, but within the realm of reality. Tripling the price of a console, and stating it's because 'I' want these bloody useless crippled unavailable technologies at my fingertips, screw that.
My point is really that MS and Sony are falling COMPLETELY out of step with the desires of the consumer. How? Who knows. The PS2 is arguably one of the best consumer entertainment products EVER. It's price rocks, it's stability is awesome, it's usefulness is extraordinary. I have NEVER gotten so much use out of a $350 piece of tech, NEVER. XBbox didn't even come CLOSE to the ROI of the PS2 from the PoV of the consumer.
Why Sony is taking a big shit on that, I'll never know. MS I get, because they never 'got' it in the first place, so it's not like they're making a fresh new blunder here and about to destroy something that was very good...they're just plodding along with mediocrity that works for them as their marketting force does an awesome job of generating fanboy mentality. Sony on the other hand WILL cease to exist, in a single generation, if they don't figure this out real quick like. There is simply NO CHANCE IN HELL that I will pay anywhere NEAR what Sony is proposing on charging for the PS3. Why would I when I could just buy a bleeding edge PC, that I can UPGRADE at my whim, for about the same cost? It would be a very stupid thing to do. They are about to price themselves right out of the console market. A console is not competition for a PC, a PC will slaughter a console any day of the week if they're on a similar price footing.
Sony's being braindead, shockingly so, in so many ways.
Man, they gave themselves a WHOLE EXTRA YEAR to get it right, and instead are GIVING this round to MS, and creating a RIPE opportunity for Nintendo to steal a HUGE amount of market share from both MS and Sony. (This is conjecture, but I would suspect that most consumers that were loyal PS fans, but decide not to go with a PS3, but DO go with a next gen console, will be WAY more likely to go with Nintendo than MS)
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