Merrill Lynch Predicts $200 Wii 341
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.'"
I already predicted this price point today. (Score:2, Informative)
I already extrapolated exactly this prediction from the data given in a previous article. The evidence I drew this conclusion from was the posted statistics in TFA of the previous note (the article is available here [curmudgeongamer.com] if you don't want to follow too many links).
Re:Another Wii (Score:2, Informative)
I have been in the options market for a little over a year now, and when the company believes a stock will go up, they set a target price and a time frame and advise me to buy... It's just the way they work.
Seems like I didn't trust them... (Score:3, Informative)
linky [slashdot.org]
Re:I think a $300 retail price at launch is likely (Score:3, Informative)
Nintendo has always had a profit on all the consoles they've sold.
I don't see why Nintendo couldn't sell at $200 and still make profit. My understanding is that the core hardware isn't that much different from the Gamecube. Sure, they might lose short term profits that they could have had, but it would be worth it if they could pull a Sony [1up.com] on Sony themselves!
Wow, flash news here (Score:5, Informative)
The NES had a launch price of $200, the SNES had a launch price of $200, the N64 had a launch price of $200, the GameCube had a launch price of $200.
Nintendo has had launch prices of $200 for 20 years now, you have to be pretty fucking impressive to even have the nerve to utter that they could launch a console for an unheard-of-before price of $200
Well, at least that time Merrill Lynch may be spot on.
Re:I think a $300 retail price at launch is likely (Score:5, Informative)
No it hasn't. Consumer electronics aren't affected by inflation.
From capacitors and resistors to DVD lasers, they're all cheaper today than ever before.
Re:Seems like I didn't trust them... (Score:1, Informative)
(For an example of how ramping the production up will affect pricing, consider this: right now the possible market for Blu-ray drives is very small, maybe less than 10k units, thus the high wholesale price. If Sony can tell a manufacturer that they expect to order a million units in a certain timeframe, they can make them that much cheaper.)
Game prices and piracy (Score:3, Informative)
The cheapest Game Boy Micro I found goes for R$399.00 ~ $181.00 (expensive, but affordable considering you only need one console). GBA games: R$ 69.00 (older games) to R$249.00 (WTF!?) ~ $31.00 to $113.00
I don't know anyone who has any of these consoles, but I know quite a few people who have PS2. The PS2 costs about $295,00 (with mod chip installed), but the games are virtually free due to piracy.
Is the situation similar in other countries? That would explain why Sony sells so many PS2.
Re:Wii = Gamecube 1.5 $200 upgrade (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Seems like I didn't trust them... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slow Down Cowboy! (waited 1 hour so far to post (Score:3, Informative)
They kicked the PSP arse with the DS by using that tactic.
DS games are typically $20.00 to $40.00 new first day release.
PSP games can go upwards of $70.00
It's a no brainer. I own 2 DS's and 2 of every game I wanted. I have spent less than a friend that is a PSP nut and I have more games than he does.
The Wii will be in many, many more homes and will sell more games than the other two combined. Hell they already have more launch titles than the Xbox 360 has available now and the machine is not due for release for many months.
People want to be able to buy a game without having to research it 5 ways before buying it. If I blow $25.00 on a stinker I am not pissed. Blowing $50-$70 on a stinker get's me pissed enough to never buy another game for a certian console again.
Most games released today suck anyways. The last game I bought was the innovative "guitar hero" for the PS2 and the "DS Brain Age" game.
I play the DS brain age game every day along with my daily dose of animal crossing crack or a race at work with others on Mario Kart DS.
No games on the other platforms are interesting enough for me to play daily. And a lot of people feel the same way recently due to the recent explosion of ho-hum games from most game makers.
Now if they port Command AND conquer to the DS, I'd be extremely unproductive.
Wii 1.5 GC (Score:2, Informative)
CPU: GC = 485 MHz IBM Power PC "Gekko" | WII = (rumored) 729 Mhz IB Power PC 790 FX
So this must be the "1.5" argument. Another poor soul who thinks processing power is the primary component of speed. I think its debatable if it's underpowered, but saying it's 1.5 times as fast is silly because the pipelines, instruction set extensions, materials, and god knows what else affects overall throughput. I have a new amd turion 64 2.0 GHz. My old model was an amd athlon 2.20 GHz. The new one compiles faster...
MEMORY: GC = 40 mg | WII = 512 mb of flash, possibly some other stuff
Well this is over 10 times more, not 1.5 more. And I believe this is a key component to the true perceived speed of this thing (besides the vid card). One thing nintendo seemed smart enough to realize is that new games are going to need a $hit load of memory, pardon my french. People want fast load times in large complex environments. This requires (fast!) memory. READ: memory is often more important than processing power.
Vid Card: from the rage3d rumor mill web site:
***
Revolution's ATI-provided "Hollywood" GPU clocks in at 243MHz. By comparison, GameCube's GPU ran at 162MHz, while the GPU on the original Xbox was clocked at 233MHz. Sources we spoke with suggest that it is unlikely the GPU will feature any added shaders, as has been speculated. "The 'Hollywood' is a large-scale integrated chip that includes the GPU, DSP, I/O bridge and 3MBs of texture memory," a studio source told us.
***
So again, we only see small change in processor speed, therefore its just 1.5 times better (sarcasm). Who knows what silly cartoon shading nutty graphics enhancements this video card features?
Re:What does your money get you? (Score:2, Informative)