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Pricing For Retro Games on the Wii
schnikies79 writes to mention an Ars Technica article revealing the pricing scheme for retro content on the Wii. From the article: "Iwata revealed that games for Nintendo's "virtual console" that will allow Wii owners to play old titles on their consoles will be priced at ¥500 and ¥1,000, roughly US$4.50 to US$8.99. For reference, classic retro games for the Nintendo GameBoy sold for upwards of US$35 for some titles, US$19.99 for others. Uptake was understandably low, as gamers were reticent to pay that much for old content." The piece goes on to say that they're ramping up DS production to meet command, and that connectivity with the DS will be a major selling point for the console when it releases.
...Are we paying attention?? You can make millions and make your customers happy without gouging your customers.
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Unless you live in Soviet Russia. I hear there they really -did- have command-side economics.
-theGreater.
If they're going to include some of the old titles from SNES for sale, I would gladly pay $5 or $9 for it. Some games - Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Link to the Past, et cetera - were and are hours and hours of great gameplay. And at that price point, I'm sure they'll sell like mad.
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So thats what, £3-6 after factoring in the "we get screwed" tax? Not too shabby, I have to say...
I really was not expecting to purchase a Wii when I first heard about it. However, after the excellent showing at E3, plus the news that the console will likely be $200-$250 at launch, as well as this news that games will be exceedingly moderate in terms of the retro downloadables... it's definitely going to be on my wish list for Christmas (and if I don't get it, I'll of course buy it.) Nintendo is seemingly making all the right moves right now... Congrats to them. Good marketing, good development, and most importantly right now, good pricing scheme so far. It's really a rock-solid console right now.
Considering some of the outlandish pricing for cell phone games (which are choppy and short in comparison to console games), this really doesn't sound all that bad.
It seems that they tend to price the games higher than their age reflects in value. Wouldn't it be a better idea to sell games as collections and then sell them for a midline amount? I might not pay $20-30 for an old Zelda game, but I might pay $30-50 for a bunch of them in a collection.
I have to say, nintendo is serious about taking a chunk out of both MS and Sony in this round. They are getting my money, that much I can tell you. Just for the zelda titles alone.
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Working stiffs like me, mid to late 20s, and a nice Gaussian distribution around me, we eat this stuff up. 40 years from now Nintendo is going to still be rereleasing 8 bit Mario Brothers onto whatever the game platform of the day is, and I'm still going to be paying for it every time it comes out, plus a nice contour with inflation. When I'm 60 years old, hopefully a bit vested, and starting to slow down a bit, think I'll toss down 200 bucks in 2040 dollars to regain 3 hours of my youth? Those damned MIDI tracks so far etched into my brain that it's literally part of my Id? That erotic twinge I get when I rescue the Princhess Toadstool (Peach?) TMI? PERHAPS! But the truth has been spoken. I might very well have a Triforce on my gravestone, and I bet more of you are with me! Don't deny your digital heritage!
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What is interesting to me about this is that they do not seem to be charging significantly differently for an NES game than for an N64 game. I was originally expecting an N64 game on Virtual Console would cost several times as much as an NES game. Apparently that's not how it works.
I'm pretty happy with these prices, $5-$9 is about how much you would normally expect to be paying anyway for almost any SNES or Genesis game, or almost any NES game worth playing, at this point if you were to buy the cartridges used. For some of the titles that have gotten harder to find, like Kid Icarus or the original Final Fantasy, $5-$9 is an absolute steal...
Now let's just hope they offer an appropriately large selection of titles.
Screw that, most of the 22 year olds I know are going to buy a Wii! It's cheap enough that it's not a major buy-- cheaper than a weekend road trip. That makes the Wii petty cash, instead of a major investment..
The line with the 'command' problem wasn't in my original submission.
Gone!
Now EVERYONE will be able to bask in the glory that is Shaq Fu for $9!
They make a big deal about the Gameboy retro games being more expensive than Wii's retro games will be. That makes sense, though, as the actual COST of a Wii retro game is a lot less.
No cartridge/cd
No box
No shipping
No marketting
Hmm... that's a lot of savings right there.
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According to a few posts on the arsforums there and a few webtranslations the article should say new games developed just for the virtual console will be between 500 and 1000 yen, not the classic nes/snes/n64 games that will be available on the virtual console as well. There was another article a few days back, explaining that 3 people should be able to put a game together in a few weeks and sell it on the console for around 5$, can't find it right now though.
So basically what you are saying that Nintendo after years of charging full price of decade old games finally lowered the price to a mera 5 dollars for games that are a few megabytes and cost next to nothing to distribute and for wich they don't have to pay any license fees?
Oh yeah. They ain't gouging. They just decided to reduce themselves to raking it in.
It is a smart business move but don't make them out to be some kind of gaming heroes. A game 10 years old that cost only a few megabyte of bandwidth to distrubute does not deserve a 4.50 price tag. They might be able to charge it but lets face it, the markup on that must make Apple blush. Hell, it would make Sony blush.
I notice this problem with people talking about digital downloads. 1 dollar/euro for an iTune song? I am sorry, you just skipped all the costs of distrubuting and stocking CD's and I don't see any reduction in the cost of an album? And it is only because Jobs knows exactly how much you can get away with that the RIAA doesn't get its way and raises the price even higher. Where are the cost savings going? As if I need to ask.
At least with the retro games for the various gameboys you got the excuse of the cost of the catridge, and distrubtion/stocking costs.
Love the fact that you can play all the old games without needing a ton of old consoles etc etc but Nintendo is going to laugh all the way to the bank. More power to them but that don't make them into some kind of heroes for me.
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So, Nintendo was charging too much, it didn't work out, now they've dropped the price. THE MONSTERS!
Sony would have said, "See! Emulation has caused our lackluster sales! Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of law!"
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
You mentioned Miyamoto twice there.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
As of June 1st, EBGames and GameStop in the USA stopped accepting PS1 and N64 games. The pricing explains the need to discontinue collecting antiques from the customers. There's no way the B&M stores can compete with the relatively lower price of the Wii Virtual Console.
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"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of law!"
The mental image that conjures is of a dog in a suit and tie howling "SUUUUEEEEEEEEE" at the moon....
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I thought the Wii could play GameCube games without the need to download them. According to the collective wisdom of everyone who's read a Nintendo press release, "The front of the console features a self-loading media drive which is illuminated by a blue light and will accept 12 cm Wii game discs, 8 cm GameCube game discs and, with an additional purchase, DVDs."
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I was convinced about the Wii when I saw their E3 presentation, but now I see that there are more and more online services and things that really extend the value of the console just for having it plugged into the internet. Mind you, these games are fairly expensive for what they are (I'll admit to grabbing a torrent full of NES ROM's at one point), but I'd still pump some money into them. The service is there, I'm sure it'll be extremely easy to use, and really, some of these games are so rare these days that you'd be hard-pressed to find them on eBay for less than $100 (NES Zelda series, for example, especially the Famicom versions; SNES Mario RPG and LoZ:LttP can garner over $400+). I'd gladly pay the amount of inflation on a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 when I can get some of these games - Legitimately - for such a low price, especially with the possibility of playing online (PLEASE say we can play them online) without the hassles involved with PC emulation online.
Scarcity and being poor are no longer excuses to download ROM's! The world has been doomed!
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Even if it is, at least it'll be wireless, so you won't /also/ have to buy a DS-Wii controller cable for each one, unlike the first game.
Don't forget also that the Wii will not interoperate with your Sony memory cards, or Sony BluRay discs, or Sony controllers! Hell, this Wii is so pathetic I wouldn't even use it as a doorstop on my Millenium Falcon.