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Wii Gets Price Cut To $199
After watching Microsoft and Sony drop the prices on the Xbox 360 and the PS3, Nintendo has decided to jump in with a price cut as well. Starting September 27th, the Wii will cost $199 in North America, a $50 drop from the previous price. Japan will be getting a slightly smaller price cut, but Europe seems to be left out of this change. Nintendo is hoping this reduction and the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus in the coming months will boost slipping sales rates.
I just bought a Wii two weeks ago. So of course the price would drop...
Same with Apple and iPhone apps. You pay $100 and off you go.
Plus $600 for Xcode if you don't already have an Intel Mac, but your point is still valid.
But Nintendo...$2000 for the SDK? Ick.
That's peanuts compared to the cost of doing an internship in another state and then leasing an office. Nintendo requires developers to have a dedicated office and experience in the mainstream video game industry.
Yeah. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but XNA and XBLA were fantastic ideas that have led to some great games. Same with Apple and iPhone apps. You pay $100 and off you go. But Nintendo...$2000 for the SDK? Ick.
This has always been Nintendo's biggest weakness. While their in-house development is good, they have an abysmal track record when it comes to third-party support. With the reinvention of the one-man "indie" developer this problem is exacerbated.
You give your own criticism to your own comment.
When it was *released* it was out of date. And it's still the best-selling games console. So what makes you think that the graphics/performance have any effect on *sales* at all? Did you ever seriously believe that game console wars have *ever* been solved by technical prowess and not by games, marketing, gameplay, etc.? At best you could claim that you prefer games with style/content but the sales figures speak for themselves about how bothered the general populous is about the "out-of-date"-ness that the Wii was released with... None.
It's been a wonderful product because it proves the point that I've always maintained - games don't even *need* graphics at all to be great games. It's always been true, but people lost track of that during the last few generations of console wars.
I read just yesterday that the rumor is the Wii's replacement will bring it up to par with the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Given that both Microsoft and Sony want this generation to last much longer than your usual console generation, I'm thinking Nintendo will have an opportunity to put out two generations of their consoles in one of their competition's generations. If they manage to convince at least some of those casual players that bought the Wii to upgrade (perhaps through affordable blu-ray player or even more casual appealing games and hardware), they could easily stay ahead of Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of consoles sold. Granted that was just a rumor, but I think it is a plausible one.
You could take a different viewpoint though. Look at XB360 and PS3: they're as much "media hubs" as they are game consoles. There was a whole addon built for the 360 specifically for the purpose of watching HDDVD movies - it has no gaming benefit whatsoever. I can log into Xbox Live and what am I greeted with? The option to purchase television shows and rent movies. And it connects up to my PC to act as a media center "extender" so I can watch video files and the like off of my PC.
Sure, the other systems have maintained more of a trend towards traditional console gaming with their games (and personally, I actually prefer that which is why the only system from this gen that I own is the 360), but it's hard to argue that Nintendo doesn't care about gaming - everything about the Wii is targetted towards gaming. It's just not the same type of gaming we are used to.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Eh... while the Atari, PS2, and Wii examples are accurate, I don't think the NES/SNES/PSX examples are correct.
NES and SMS were very very close in capability. The SMS might have been superior in some nitpicky sense, but if you play games on both systems it isn't apparent that SMS outpaces NES. I'll give you credit that NES won despite not having any obvious technical superiority (since it didn't.)
At SNES vs Genesis: Genesis was noticably inferior. Genesis was NOT 32 bit capable, as it used a 68000 on a 16 bit bus. Its cpu was measurably faster, however its graphics and sound hardware were noticeably behind SNES. If you play SNES and then play Genesis, especially games that were on both systems, the SNES version nearly always had better graphics and sound. Due to the censorship issue, I wouldn't compare Mortal Kombat 1 on Genesis to SNES, but if you go to MK2, the SNES version is a lot closer to the arcade version than the Genesis version was. Having a slightly faster processor doesn't outweigh the greatly superior dedicated sound and graphics chips of the SNES. Genesis can only put 64 colors on screen out of a palette of 4096... SNES can put 256 colors on screen out of a palette of 32768. Not to mention FM synthesis in the Genesis vs 8 channel PCM mixing in SNES.
As far as Playstation vs N64... the Playstation won because its storage system was technically superior to N64. Game developers didn't want to be limited to expensive ROM, so developers switched in droves to PSX. The 3d rendering capabilities of N64 were limited by the small amount of data each game could hold, not to mention a tiny texture cache that limited the detail in games. Granted, the main CPU in N64 was superior to the main CPU in PSX, but this isn't the only "technical" detail of the system. Playstation won due to technical superiority: In 1996, CDs were technically superior to rom cartridges.
You know, you could actually look up the software sales, instead of speculating. The Wii generally has more titles dominating the charts than the 360 or PS3... or looking at it another way, Wii+DS software usually outsells 360+PS3+PSP software. 3rd party software sales are similar to the 360's quantities, and exceeding the PS3's by quite a bit. That's with quite a bit more consoles sold, however, so the attach rate is closer to the PS3's. The 360 wins there.