Wii to Launch Nov. 19th for $250

PygmySurfer writes "According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nintendo is going to announce today that the Wii will go on sale on November 19th in North and South America, at a cost of $250. It will come bundled with Wii Sports and channels for such things as viewing photos, as well as news and weather. Finally, Wii will also make it possible to browse the web on your television. Nintendo will also announce that 25-30 games will be published this year, as well as about 30 classic games available on the virtual console, costing about $5-10."

Re:Hogwash!!

[AuMatar]

Like most companies, they round their prices to nice numbers. Welcome to the world of foreign exchange. Besides, who knows what the exchange rate will be in 2 months- it could be the same, it could be even cheaper, it could be far more.

Re:Awwww :(

[Wind_Walker]

They'll sell fifteen billion Zelda games even if they don't bundle it. So why would they include it as a pack-in when they could make higher margins selling it stand-alone?

Re:Wahoh!

[7Prime]

Things are starting to not add up. A Sunday release? 2 days after PS3... that seems EXTREMELY risky to me, if not foolhardy. Plus the fact that the article was taken down, this could all be pure speculation. I'm going to guess that the $250 price tag is correct, but I kinda doubt the date is, something's just fishy, the next few hours will probably tell.

article pulled, inaccurate?

[Karma Sucks]

Let's play "spot the pattern."

SNES launch price: 25000 Yen / 200 USD.
N64 launch price: 25000 Yen / 200 USD.
Gamecube launch price: 25000 yen / 200 USD.
Wii launch price: 25000 yen / ??? USD.

Hrm.

Re:www.wii.com

[Wind_Walker]

Great videos on that site, even if they're all in Japanese right now

Wii Menu [wii.com]
Wii Web Browser/News Channel [wii.com]
Wii Weather [wii.com]

Snakes on a Plane of consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Wii will be the Snakes on a Plane of consoles. All this internet buzz, but when it comes to actual sales...fratboys are going to buy xbox360s or ps3s. simple.

Re:Hogwash!!

[modeless]

Ignoring the real exchange rate, Nintendo's exchange rate in previous console releases has consistently been 25000 yen = $200. The SNES, N64, and GameCube all launched with this pair of prices.

However, the Japanese Wii doesn't include pack-in Wii Sports. If the NYT is correct (long shot; release prior to Japan?!?), perhaps the American launch is going to be somewhat different. Here's hoping that extra $50 gets us both Wii Sports *and* a second controller out of the box to play it with. That would be worth the difference.

Re:Letdown.

[SharpFang]

So as usually, the truth is in the middle :P
The cost of debugging a 10 years old game with the emulator will certainly not be 1/5 of a new title, but neither it will be 0.01% of the price of the download. Sales of these old games are expected to be lower than the new titles too. Nintendo will be making a good penny on the old games but this is NOT money for free - the actual cost of one download, including preparation of the ROM with betatesting and emulator corrections will not be near the sale price ($4-$8), but neither it will be ($0.01-$0.03) as the OP asserts. 40-80% is to be expected. 99% not.
(also note some more obscure titles may require just the same amount if not more work, while producing really low revenue or even loss due to very limited sales...)

Re:Hogwash!!

[aplusjimages]

Christmas [santas.net] in Japan is actually a big deal. Even though it doesn't contain the Christian influence the big gift giving part is.

Re:So much is right, they can't go wrong.. can the

[Lectoid]

I totally agree with you. Another way to look at the $250 price. The extra 50 dollars is a lifetime of free "Live" for the Wii, instead of just a year.