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.

Re:Wii upgrade.

[cabjf]

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.

Re:Still too much.

[bluefoxlucid]

As opposed to the rumbling surge in sales for the XBox360 and PS3 coming up right around the corner, well after their initial break-in to the market?

Good Move

[lyonsjor]

It is about time that Nintendo decided to do this. The gaming quality and high definition produced by PS3 and XBox 360 already give incentive to buyers to purchase those consoles over Wii. Hopefully the cheaper price tag will attract more consumers. Also, most consumers will purchase the new Wii Motion Plus for more accurate gameplay. Still Nintendo needs to do more to appeal to a mroe variety of gamers.

Despite the price drop

[Theoboley]

I still won't be getting one for 2 reasons.

1. I happen to like my HDTV a little too much to put a wiimote through it.

2. It's horribly lacking in 3rd party games which stinks. Wii Sports, Mario, Zelda and Metroid will only carry you so far.

Re:Wii upgrade.

[MBGMorden]

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.

Re:Wii upgrade.

[Toonol]

See, I think Nintendo saved gaming from the living-room-media-hub-centric-controlling desires of Sony and Microsoft. Video game fans would be in a world of hurt if either of those companies had managed to dominate the industry.

Why the 50$ price cut?

[Yvan256]

I guess Nintendo heard Apple talk about the magical 199$ price tag [crunchgear.com] (warning: lots of photos). Look at around 1:51 PM ~ 1:52 PM:

1:51 PM: Greg Kumparak âoeWe learned something very important a few years back.â
1:51 PM: Greg Kumparak "Essentially, $199 is a magic spot."
1:52 PM: Greg Kumparak "When they dropped from $249 to $199, sales of the past iPod models almost doubled."

So if the same thing happens to Nintendo and the Wii, sales should double from now on until at least Christmas.

Re:Wii upgrade.

[Toonol]

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.

Re:Soon

[ultranova]

There's no Zelda for Wii (it's a Gamecube port) and Mario Galaxy was meh at best.

Mario Galaxy is great; however, the control scheme in the main game - shake the controller to spin - is a hindrance, not an asset. The same is true of Zelda. On the other hand, Metroid 3 works fine, not as fine as 2D Metroid but fine nonetheless.

Offhand, I'd say that compulsive use of 3D in what's really platformer games is the greatest weakness in current game consoles.

Re:For the "hackers" out there....

[domatic]

The Twilight Hack has been obsoleted by System Updates; if the Homebrew channel or other loader was installed then updates didn't remove it. Nonetheless, the Twilight Hack won't work on a Wii that is patched up current. The current exploit du jour is Bannerbomb; it doesn't require a copy of Twilight Princess and works even on current versions of the System Menu.

I will say this for a well exploited Wii. I can select any title that I own from a menu and play it without getting up to change discs as all the titles I own have been ripped to a USB hard drive. Nintendo and the other consoles should have enabled something like that from the get go. I have no problem with serializing such a scheme so that your rips won't work on another console. It should also be possible to do something to distinguish rental titles so that one can't compile a library super cheap from GameFly.

I haven't touched physical media for years for music. This will soon be true of my video as well. And I would like that to continue to be true of any console gaming I do as well. If the console makers don't step up, I'll go with the thoroughly pwned consoles where homebrewers have.