Nintendo's Iwata on the Wii Price Point 141
kukyfrope writes "Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President, recently talked with GameDaily about the rumors surrounding the $249 Wii price point, his take of the PS3 price point and controller, and to reassure us that the GameBoy is far from dead! 'You may want to check our past records of price points when launching past hardware... I think you'll agree that we always come up with an affordable price point.'"
200 bucks it is then... (Score:5, Informative)
Okay. 200 bucks it is then. I'm in.
console prices, past and present, with inflation (Score:2)
I priced out all the systems from NES to Wii, Master System to Dreamcast, PSX to PS3, and Xbox to Xbox 360, including inflation and release dates in another slashdot post [slashdot.org].
Re:console prices, past and present, with inflatio (Score:2)
I used the Mac, because it's conventient to look up past prices on "lowendmac.com", admitedly, Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just let's check it out.
In 1985, when the NES was released for $200, the Macintosh 512K (no hard drive) came out for $3,300.
In 1990, when the $200 SNES arrived, the Mac IIfx was introduced at $
Re:console prices, past and present, with inflatio (Score:2)
Gyah. Preview, preview, preview.
That was supposed to read:
Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just meant to be a quick-and-dirty snapshot of a couple eras... let's check it out.
Why, oh why, does the slashcode still not allow edits, after all these years!?
Re:console prices, past and present, with inflatio (Score:2)
You've made a comparison that may have some merit. I don't see it, but maybe you can help me there. 8-bit $200 NES vs 32-bit $3300 Mac 512k, 16-bit $200 SNES vs 32
Ok so basically (Score:4, Insightful)
Iwata laughed at the very idea that the Wii could be released for $250 and tells the journalist to do his homework and realize that Nintendo's release price point has been fixed at $200 for the past 20 years for every single non-portable console.
Seriously, who even cares about that, the Wii will be $200 or less period, and no one gives a fuck about the price unless we have the actual ability to buy it.
Oh, and I'd be much more interrested by the potential price point of the games, because what I'll save by having a Wii over an XBox or a PS3 i'll more than likely blow in games.
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
For a company that's over a hundred years old, they certainly have an interesting take on inflation...
Re:Ok so basically (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say they have an absolutely correct take on commoditization.
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
That works too - and it's probably more correct - but I was actually commenting on the commoditization of console gaming systems.
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Nintendo != a commodity product, just built of em (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo probably has one of the best business models in the entire electronics industry. They make money on the box. They make money on the first-party games. They make a little less money on all the other games. They make money on the IP surrounding the games, to the extent that just *one* of their franchises has a worldwide value approaching that of a small country. With the advent of downloadable games on the Wii (whhhhhhhhhhhhhhy), they'll even make money on the retail/distribution of games (no more paying BestBuy/WalMart/Yamada Denki a 60% cut).
Re:Ok so basically (Score:1)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:1)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:1)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:5, Informative)
$50, same as now.
The excuse for $60 games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the higher resolution they display at. Since the Wii "only" does 480p, like the GameCube and the Xbox, the prices will be the same.
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
By that standard I should probably be GLAD that I pay "only" 60 bucks for PC games...
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
PS3 and 360 on the other hand, have massively parallel architecture, and to get any sort of performance at all out of the machines, you need to be running at least 6 threads simultaneously. This involves a mass
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
On a console, only licensed developers are allowed to make games. This means purchasing an expensive devkit, and t
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:1)
The saddest part for me is that they're spending all that money and the games don't look any different than t
Re:Ok so basically (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:1)
Although, if that were the case, I wouldn't have had to pay the same price at the cinema, and more on DVD for the rather excellent "Primer" (shooting budget: $7000) than the rather less excellent "King Kong" (shooting budget: $207000000).
What's cooking, in the simplest terms (Score:1)
Do I pay per pixel or what's cooking here?
To put it even simpler: Texture artists and shader developers charge per texel, modelers charge per polygon, and coders who are new to threaded programming charge per concurrent core.
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
The excuse for $60 games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the higher resolution they display at.
Launch game prices seem to be generally higher than in the middle of the console's life, though $50 is quite a lot for a single game, I'd think, I don't remember ever paying that much, the most was $40 and I thought that was a lot.
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Titles now range several hundred megs to a gig or more. There are still titles you can finish in a few hours, and sports games don't really fit the example too well, but many adventure and rpg games now are built around having 100's of hours of gameplay. Its intense!
Re:Ok so basically (Score:3, Insightful)
Well.. your heart's in the right place, that's a little misleading. It takes a bigger budget to fill the higher resolution of the games. More textures, higher detailed models, etc. I imagine there'll be even more programming time (i.e. optimizations) to make the games work at that res. That's one of Nintendo's attr
Re:Ok so basically (Score:3, Insightful)
The excuse for $60 games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the higher resolution they display at. Since the Wii "only" does 480p, like the GameCube and the Xbox, the prices will be the same.
Any basic business student will tell you that the price you sell something is proportional to the price the market will bear, not the cost of production. If games are being sold at $60 on the X360, it's because the publisher believes they can sell $60 games on the X360, not because the game cost $10 mor
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
That's the case if competition is somehow excluded from the pot. Each console manufacturer competes with its own proprietary system, instead of generalized hardware, so each has, in effect, a little monopoly, with only some of the games available on all the platforms. The greater the effect competition has, the lower the prices the manufacturer must set t
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:2)
Re:Ok so basically (Score:1)
Misleading article/headline (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the interview is not about the price point. When he does talk about it, he only says that he can't talk about it.
Re:Misleading article/headline (Score:2)
Nintendo Pricing (Score:4, Informative)
In case anyone is out of the loop here, all of Nintendo's main consoles have retailed or US$199. You can draw your own conclusions from there.
Re:Nintendo Pricing (Score:2)
Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:3, Informative)
Duh, every single Nintendo console was released at a $200 price point from the NES to the GameCube...
Re:Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:2)
Re:Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:2)
Not really. Broadway, while still PPC/Gecko based, is a brand new custom designed chip from IBM. Hollywood, while still based off the GCN archetecture, is also a brand new custom designed chip from ATi. They're still using MoSYS ram, but a whole new generation of it. And they've got a brand-new custom Matsushita CD/DVD drive.
The power and AV conversion s
Re:Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:1)
Re:Two hundred fifty bucks! (Score:2)
Just so long as we all agree that the list price of the 360 is $400, and street price $800 at launch is not really a fair comparison to the list price of the Wii. For all we know, the Wii will end up costing $800 due to high demand as well.
Also, that kid's an idiot. Marble Blast on Live only costs, what, $5 and it's m
Just wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just wow (Score:2)
Re:Just wow (Score:2)
Re:Just wow (Score:2)
Re:Just wow (Score:2)
However, he did think Iwata was a good successor, and he actually refused his retirement pension.
Driving, for example. (Score:2)
My custom-made bumper sticker, which I've not yet had the gumption to stick on the actual car, reads "Try driving like a decent person. Maybe you'll become one." I'm actually afraid to apply the thing; it seems like it might draw some sort of road rage attack.
There's some balancing point between faked respect -- insincerity -- and the sort of "disrespectful" tone we're talking about in the M
Re:Driving, for example. (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm aware. It's kind of sad that he held out against merchandising out of conscience and got rewarded with that stuff. I hate that. Meanwhile the estate of Charles Schulz continues to rake in money on licensing agreements.
(I'm still hoping Bill' writing "Frazz" -- "the older Calvin" -- secretly.)
Re:Just wow (Score:1)
Re:Just wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Such as it is: Iwata, and all of Nintendo Japan will hold their national traditions and quirks. The only persons from Nintendo you'll hear actively bashing Sony will be execs from Euroland/the U.S.
I personal
price doesn't matter... much (Score:1, Interesting)
This isn't to say that plenty of people will buy one or more of the consoles because they like the brand or own the previous generations of it or that some people will make their decisions based on price. IMO, pric
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:1, Flamebait)
Why does every Sony nerd and his developmentally disabled cousin say this as if it's a foregone conclusion? The thing is going to cost US$500 minimum . Whether or not it's going to have a dominating marketshare (the determining factor for whether it has "the widest selection of games") is very much in question.
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2, Informative)
If anything the only factor that will bring people to the PS3 is BRAND LOYALTY.
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2)
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say that if you buy 20 games at $50 each, you're insane. I have around 20 PS2 games, and about 6 of those were bought for $50. The rest were either used or on sale. I think it's accurate to say that most gamers fall more in line with my buying pattern. Perhaps you should re-do your math to reflect those of us who are sane.
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:1)
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:5, Insightful)
1) There's a difference between a wide selection and a wide variety. I may have 200 different kinds of peanut butter I can buy at the grocery store, but they're still all peanut butter. I'm not saying the PS3 won't have a large selection, or variety, I'm just saying we don't know if it will.
2) You make a great point about how over the life of a console, the actual cost of the console itself pales in comparison to the additive cost of the games (if you buy a great many). Here's the thing, we know for a fact that games for the PS3 and Xbox 360 will cost $60 new. The price for Wii games will be lower, though I'm not overly optimistic and personally only see them staying at $50 (although some would say they'll be priced similarly to DS games around $35). Over the course of 20-50 purchases that price difference adds up. With my estimation, that's $200-$500 more you'd pay for an equivalent number of PS3 or Xbox 360 games than for a Wii. If we go for the optimistic view, the figure changes to $500-$1250 more. The benefit Nintendo offers isn't just a cheaper console, but cheaper games too.
3) Most people don't have $500-$600 just sitting around. Regardless of the relative unimportance of the console's cost in the long run, it's not easy to spend half a grand. Your everyday Joe, even college students, can compulsively pay $50-$60 for a game. They can even compulsively buy $200 consoles. However, as a price gets higher the "ease" with which one can just go ahead and buy something decreases drastically. $300 gives some pause, $400 requires some careful thought, but $500 and $600 are extremely difficult to say, "Oh what the heck, I'll buy it!" to.
That's not to say there are people whose compulsivity knows no bounds. Those people exist. I'm also not implying that the only way consoles are bought are through compulsion, that's certainly not true. $500 or $600 will cause people to stop and think before buying when they might not have otherwise. They may well decide to buy anyway, with logic very much like yours, but they may well look at the other options and decide they like them better.
Console price may not be the "driving" factor, but it is a major one.
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Nintendo doesn't necessarily have cheaper games... (Score:2)
Right now if I go on ebay, chances are good I can find a ps2 game I'd like to play for under $10. Heck, chances are I can find 20 such games. I know, I've been sniping cheap ps2 games off ebay for between $4 and $10 bucks, building a collection of 40+ gam
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:1)
Most people will buy the Wii... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2)
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2)
And because people pay for cable, the cost of flat panel TVs hasn't kept them from spending more than a grand on those... except it has, and does, still.
You might want to read some of the other comments. Or try my shoes on:
I've got two 12-year-olds. One of their friends has an original X-Box. That friend hasn't seriously considered the 360. It's t
Re:price doesn't matter... much (Score:2)
Scenario #1:
Me: Honey, I'm going to go out and get that new Wii I've been telling you about.
Wife: How much was it again?
Me: $200
Wife: (hesitates) Well, I guess. You'll have to pack your lunch for a couple weeks because you can't afford to spend extra money eating out.
Me: Okay.
END SCENE
Scenario #2:
Me: Honey, I'm going to go out and get that new PS3 I've been telling you about
Price only matters to normal people. (Score:2)
And don't forget to include the cost of the television to play the games on, your rent, the electrical bill, and the hookers to play with you! [penny-arcade.com] Once you account for all of that, why, the difference is microscopic!
At 50 games for a console, all apparently paid for at full price (which you see fond of), you have an insane amount of disposable income, and money doesn't m
Why I think $200 (Score:2, Insightful)
If the $299 core drops down to $250, it would be smart for nintendo to release the Wii at $200. I'm sure they could compete at $250, but a decent amount of hype regarding the Wii is about how cheap it is, so I'm sure they will stay cheaper than the competition.
On the other hand, if the co
Re:Why I think $200 (Score:2)
Re:Why I think $200 (Score:2)
On the other hand, if the core price doesn't drop (maybe only the premium will, $360 looks like a good number), then I think the Wii will sell just as many at $250 as they will at $200.
You have those prices wrong -- that would be $249.99 and $199.99. And if marketing research has shown us anything, it's that $1XX products sell more than $2XX products regardless of your values for XX.
Re:Why I think $200 (Score:1)
Wow, just wow!
This should be modded +5 Profound
Why care about console price? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh yeah gameplay is alright but really does a Advance Wars Dual Strike deserve the same price point as an Oblivion?
I think that that is the real Nintendo success. That consumers so far are not objecting to paying full price for games for handheld games that have cost a fraction of the development costs.
With DS sales so high I can't help but feal DS developers
Re:Why care about console price? (Score:3, Informative)
At ebgames.com, Oblivion is selling for $49.99 PC and $59.99 Xbox 360. Advance Wars DS, on the other hand, is selling for $34.99 (which is where it started by the way). DS titles debut typically at either $29.99 or $34.99 while console titles debut typically at $49.99 (and $59.99, though that's 360 only until the PS3 comes along). In other words, all your DS talk is a bunch of hot air...
Re:Why care about console price? (Score:2)
Re:Why care about console price? (Score:2)
Re:Why care about console price? (Score:2)
It is, hands down, the system I play the most. The size (combined with the sleep/quicksave mode in most GBA games) really makes it the perfect
Re:Why care about console price? (Score:2)
Re:Why care about console price? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your point about downloadable game I agree with though, they better be cheap, especially if they are straight ports.
Finally, I'm getting sick of the argument that X costs more than Y because "X has better hardware/more features". I don't care one bit what it costs to make something, if the feature does not have value to me, I don't want to pay for it. That is something
How about the Japanese price? (Score:1, Interesting)
Do you think that, suppose they break their US -> $199 rule with the Wii, the Japanese price will have any effect?
$200 is the smart number (Score:2)
1) It is much lower than the competition.
2) It is a figure consumers have been acclimated to in the past.
3) Microsoft is probably unlikely to drop the core system's price more than $50 to try and compete IMO, as such, $250 is not a safe price point as it could probably end up competing with the 360 Core System (Note that I don't think the Wii would be a better buy at $250 than the crippled XBOX 360, but I'm not the one Nintendo needs to convince, as I'm
Enough, I say! (Score:2)
Iwata: Well, it will have a price.
Reporter:
Iwata: Definately a rational number. Who knows, it could be a whole number!
Reporter: Do I need to break out the hangman board?
I want to know the price, but wild speculation and tight lips is just getting annoying, especially since we're probably only five months or so from launch.
Re:Enough, I say! (Score:2)
It is annoying, but the rampant speculation is just one of the many things that is keeping people talking about the Wii. Sony on the other hand probably revealed too much, but in doing so reassured the world why it is not gaining many friends.
very important in economic times like these (Score:5, Insightful)
This ignores the purchasing patterns that people have. Even if the overall price (with games) of the Wii was *more* expensive then the competition, the lower initial console price would still cause purchases in their favor.
This happens for the same reason that people buy things on credit cards and then pay them off over time. If people don't need to pay for something immediately, then they don't think about it.
Furthermore, there's the issue of Christmas, birthdays etc for children. A lot of parents raising children are on a pretty tight budget, and you can be sure they will balk at a console that costs 50 to 100 dollars more than the competition, let alone a console like the PS3 that's going to cost as much as 3 times the competition. Christmas is going to be huge for nintendo at their price point.
I remember begging my parents for an original NES then on christmas opening up a game that consisted of a video cassette of a race, and a little toy car that attached to the front of the tv and moved horizontally from a little electric motor.
Right now, a lot of parents are in those shoes. It may be true that the economy overall has picked up, but wages definitely have *not* and the wall mart shoppers of america are in even worse straights then they generally are.
Most people in the tech sector are pretty well off, and even if they aren't tend to be hard core gamers and see their game expense as a non negotiable expenditure in their budget. In the past game companies pandered to them exclusively because they were willing to burn a lot of money, and not a lot of people outside that group played video games at all. What they need to realize is that increasingly they are not the only gamers in the market. Nintendo has picked up on this, and effectively has been making their prices cheaper and cheaper over the years by keeping them the same and let inflation make that same price less. Sony and microsoft on the other hand seem to be competing entirely for early adopters with cash to burn, which is a lucrative but small demographic.
Re:very important in economic times like these (Score:2)
Opting for a cheaper console is often a no-no for parents trying to sate their youngster's gaming fix. This is especially true for poorer families [at least here in the UK] for whom such consumer items are status symbols. Not owning the right console [or shoe, mobile phone..] is actually quite a stigma for certain people.
That said, Nintendo really aren't aiming squarely at the gaming-savvy youth in the playground, th
Controllers (Score:2)
Re:Controllers (Score:2)
All that being said, I don't think the controllers will cost them as much to make as you think. Gy
Re:Controllers (Score:2)
Sure it will. (Score:1, Redundant)
The NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube all launched at $199.99.
Re:Sure it will. (Score:1)
Re:Sure it will. (Score:1)
Going from SNES to N64; Mario64, Pilotwings, the controller was a godsend for me, Goldeneye...
Then look at the move from N64 to GameCube, Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, et cetera.
Look at history, Nintendo has always offered huge graphics upgrades, and the Wii will not be any different. I think the demos at E3 were just there to show you how to use the controller.
Re:no more than 250 anyway (Score:2)
Re:no more than 250 anyway (Score:1)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Sure it will.
In 2012 or so.
Also by then, a non-HD television to plug it in to will be free. People will beg you to take it, so they can avoid the disposal fee.
So realistically, buying one now with the intention of selling it in six years only costs you $225. Plus, it will enable you to get somebody to take your old TV set when the time comes. That's gotta easily be worth $26 or so.
There you go. $199 price-point reached. ^_^
Re:Well... (Score:2)
I can also spread peanut butter on a Kobe steak, but that seems kind of wasteful when I'll get the same peanut butter taste spreading it on Wonder Bread.