1 Million Wii Units At Launch 123
Ars Technica is reporting on Nintendo's announcement that there will be 1 Million Wii units available at launch in the United States. Not only is that an impressive number of units, it's twice what the 360 launched with, and more than twice what Sony will be offering when it launches in the same month. From the article: "If Nintendo sells that many systems on the first day, and they turn a profit on every system sold, Nintendo is going to have some very rosy financials heading into the holiday season. If they're making money on systems as well as games, and gamers embrace the virtual console, this may be one of the most successful launches in gaming history. We'll see if they are able to deliver the numbers they're talking about here; a launch that large would be a major coup for Nintendo, and would give them a running start towards getting their systems into the homes of as many customers as possible." So, despite some disappointment at the later-than-hoped-for launch date, it looks like Nintendo is making good use of its time.
Nice! (Score:4, Funny)
Ryan Fenton
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My experiences at different stores:
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BTW, the official preorders haven't started yet, so anything you put down now is gambling on the retailers ability to secure the units.
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The problem is, you're not guaranteed a system on the release date.
I preordered from Coconuts (owned by Trans World, same as FYE) a few weeks back and I was the fourth person to preorder. That means that I'm guaranteed the fourth system the store gets. However, they have no idea how many they'll get...
I did it just to be safe, but I'll also preorder from Gamestop once they begin taking preorders as well.
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OT: PP Sig (Score:2)
E S S D E N E E NW. It just popped into my head. Talk about setting the hook deep!
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I am not making this up!
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"The Toyr-R-Us across the street, however, is taking pre-orders, says my friend who works there and has pre-ordered hers."
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Nintendo Customer Service (Score:2, Informative)
It's surprising really (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's surprising really (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you realise how hard it is to innovate when you're going bankrupt?
With a sound financial status and money rolling in, they can do whatever they damn well like, and even take some crazy risks with games, franchises and so on. A lot of people consider that Wind Waker was a risk; cutesy cell-shaded Zelda didn't gel with a lot of the fans. Maybe it didn't sell as many copies. Would they have done that if they really needed to make money off the franchise instead of try something a little new?
Pe
Virtual Console a Weakness (Score:1, Insightful)
I would never pay more than a buck for a digitally delivered NES game and not more than $2 to $2.50 for a SNES game.
Otherwise, I have nothing but love for the Wii so far and will probably buy one shortly after the second batch becomes available, provided no major problems crop up from the early adopter batch.
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The SNES and most other early consoles have a resolution of 256×224 (varies here and there, but that one seems to be most widespread), the DS has two screens with 256x192, so it shouldn't be to much of an issue, especially considering that many games use some of the vertical space for HUD and not for the game itself (HUD could go to the second screen on DS). There of course are games were thi
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As for playing on the DS, there are plenty of homebrew NES/SNES/etc emulators for the DS if you're willing to put out some money for a supercard or alternative.
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It's the same with XBox 360 Marketplace games... Joust was well worth the 400 points to me. Gauntlet, too. But Street Fighter wasn't, so, and here's the surprise... I didn't buy it. -gasp-
Seriously, if you don't like it, don't fret it. If others don't like it either, they won't buy it, and Nintendo will know.
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I certainly see where you're coming from, and I too will probably buy a few select games (though most of these games I have for my still-functional NES and SNES, may not be getting those either).
The thing is, for the "casual" gamer who may not have a long history with SNES and NES and who won't have a desperate urge t
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Just think, for the price of an XBox 360 game you can get 12 NES games, 7 SNES games, or 6 N64 games. That seems pretty good to me.
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About 50 NES games and about a dozen SNES. I still have most of them and my SNES and NES still work. I can count on both hands the games that I ever actually play anymore from those systems. Assume that I want the convenience of having them on my main game console rather than having to screw around blowing in the NES. That still puts me, a pretty
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I've had just about enough of your "Deadly Towers"-bashing, young man.
DT is not a BAD game, just a mediocre one. I could easily name a dozen NES titles which were an order of magnitude worse, and that's not even counting anything by Color Dreams.
I mean, I wouldn't spend $2 to get it on the
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I disagree. DT is a terrible game. No it isn't the worst NES game, in particular because unlike a lot of the truly shitty NES games, the makers of Deadly Towers seem to have been trying to make a good game. Instead they made one of the most annoying, frustrating, and utterly pointless RPG/adventures I've ever seen. Perhaps it's th
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My nephews for instance... They are half my age and never owned any console before the PSX. They simply will not care about 99.9% of the games before that point. There's a few series that still exist today
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Custom packs are a little better, because you don't get any of the games you don't want. But if it's a 5-game pack, and you want 6 games, you've got to get 4 more games that you wouldn't have bought otherwise.
Then you have to consider that getting games in packs only gives marginal savings (especially custom packs - extra infrastructure cos
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1 million is good (Score:1)
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The summary is off by a couple (tens? hundreds?) units though. It's not 1 million for USA, it's 1 million for North America, which means they'll send maybe 100k to Canada and 2 or 3 to Mexico. USA ain't alone in America.
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I really don't care about how they are distributed, as long as one gets distributed my way.
Really though, way to kill a lame joke with accusations of nationalism.
God damn (Score:1, Funny)
EB/Gamestop (Score:1, Informative)
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Toys R Us? (Score:2)
I know the Toys R us here (Nb Canada) has been taking pre-orders for the Wii since late spring, before it was even *called* the "Wii" (basically they had "Revolution" then they stuck a Wii sticker over the sign later!). I think they were just taking a $100 deposit or something like that.
It's not like EB/Gamestop is the only place you can buy video game systems.
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They said they were taking pre-orders starting the following Monday, and that you were required to bring in $50 worth of trade-ins to get your pre-order. The employee behind the counter specifically stated that they wouldn't be taking any cash or card--trade-ins only.
I promptly told the employees at both stores that I'd be taking my business elsewhere from that point forwar
demand (Score:5, Informative)
It also has a lot to do with the hardware - the Wii is an incredibly similar system to the Gamecube architecture-wise. The components are also cheaper and easier to produce.
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It looks like Wii Sports, and possibly a lot of multi-player and party games, won't require the nunchuck attachment. So I think you can get the needed extra controllers for Wii Sports for $40.
I agree though that $60 is a lot. I understand the controller may be pretty sophisticated as controllers go, but that doesn't make $60 less than $60. I was really hoping for 2 controllers in the bundle... If my speculation abo
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Oh, wait, except you're getting a console, a game, and four wireless controllers for that price. For my Xbox, that would run a grand total of $600 + a game. $700+ for a PS3 and controllers.
$60 is $60, but seriously people, at launch a Gamecube + 3 controllers would have run, what $320 for system + four corded controllers? It's not that bad
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Which is a lot of money. The base console is $250, and you've basically doubled that price so you can play Mario Party the way it was intended.
Yeah, it's about the same as an Xbox or Ps3 without anything else, but I'm not buying either of those consoles exactly because they cost so much. I don't give a fuck if I could get a Wii, seven controllers, eight copies of Zelda, and a jewel encrusted chalice for the pr
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Who cares? Yes the other consoles are more, but stop thinking about it in terms of the console wars for two seconds, and actually think about that family that can barely afford their three kids and want to get them something for christmas. It isn't a choice between the Wii and the Xbox 360, it's a choice between the Wii and something that isn't a console. It's great that you thi
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That sucks for sure. You guys always get shafted that way, too.
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Base console = $250
3 extra wiimotes x $40 = $120
3 extra nunchucks x $20 = $60
Grand total= $430
Or, more realistically, $370 since you probably don't need those extra nunchucks for multiplayer, at least not with the launch software that I've seen described. I'll buy a couple of games, 1 extra wiimote, and some component ca
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Nintendo is allegedly selling their console at a profit, so they don't really have any reason for the controllers to be out of line with the WaveBird, which debuted at $35. (Assuming that the Wiimote + nunchuk costs about the same as the WaveBird to produce, which seems to be the case.)
Com
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Oh great, here we go again. [joystiq.com]
Assuming that the Wiimote + nunchuk costs about the same as the WaveBird to produce
Maybe there's something a bit different about these controllers that make them more expensive. Something else that they can do. What could it be?
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1. Because acknowledging those costs would prevent certain fanboys from being able to declare the Wii as a "slightly upgraded GameCube";
2. Because Nintendo already ate those costs, so game developers will not have to. From a dev's perspective, authoring a Wii game should be very similar to authoring a Cube game; the same will not be true about PS2 vs. PS3. Being able to code effectively f
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Why does everyone presume that there was a massive R&D effort for the remote controller? I don't doubt that there was some significant effort involved, but it's not like no one's ever done anything like this before. MS had a tilt controller way back when, Gyration mice (in whom Nintendo is a major investor) have tilt functionality... there's some interesting technology there, but I'm no
One million (Score:2)
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If you're bitching me out because I am not in a starving country and have budgeted my income according to my lifestyle, then what are you doing on the internet posting comments on Slashdot when you could be out working a job to get a paycheck to buy your food and water?
Correction... (Score:4, Informative)
1 Million units in North America for launch says Rob Bertram, Nintendo of Canada's Vice President
of course they are making a profit (Score:2)
All signs point to Nintendo making a huge profit on each Wii, I wouldn't be surpised with a sub $100 manufacturing cost of the Wii. All of the controllers included probably adds another $50 or so.
1) Nintendos long track record and massive experience with console manufacturing
2) Highly available and proven components, DVD, 802.11, flash memory, SD memory, USB 2.0
3) Dialed back CPU and GPU specs.
specs:
http://ww [gamespot.com]
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No onne knows how much profit they make, but it'd be surprising if they made "a huge profit on each Wii". A profit yes, they said so and they did it with every console of theirs, but if their profit was so huge they wouldn't risk their market by princing the pack at $250/250
Re:of course they are making a profit (Score:5, Insightful)
If they think 1 million Wiis will sell out at launch at a $250 pricepoint, they'd be fools to make the launch price lower than that, regardless of how large their profit margin is.
If demand starts to wane after a while, they can reduce the price to $200 and still make a profit on every unit. Until then, they've just made at least $50 million off the early adopters that they otherwise wouldn't have.
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Besides that, you've got the fact that to Joe Average, the idea paying $4-600 for a video game system is probably a cause of dyspepsia. Those who *know* video games already know the difference between the 360, PS3, and the Wii, and price isn't the only factor in their decision
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Well
Perrin Kaplin (Nintendo's VP of Marketing) claimed that the Wii would be breaking even on hardware costs and would be a system which was profitable from the start because of game sales. She could be lying but I would assume she would not stretch the truth too much. We know that a yea
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Well she's not going to come out and say they're making huge markups on it is she?
With 3 Wiis for every PS3 (Score:1)
Or will we have to wait until March before they let us buy those in Seattle?
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Well, since I'm in Seattle, that's cool. I can see why region encoding might matter in Europe. A Japanese or Chinese game frequently will have a (primitive) US English dialog choice, except for cut-scenes and other chrome, but in Europe they tend to want the base language plus English (e.g. in France you get French and English).
I bought a whole bunch o
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-Eric
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What about accessories? (Score:1, Interesting)
It has to be said; (Score:1)
I know it's redundant to say, but this article makes me very excited about the Wii.
However, for a slice of reality, it's not $200 like we all wish it would have been. We'll probably have to spend well over $100 on accessories at launch (almost $60 for an additional Wiimote+nunchuck, $20 for each classic remote, and however much you want to splurge on additional flash memory). And depending on how the Wii system is set up, it may/may not be easy to find your friends and take over the world.
Number of Wiis per store (Score:5, Insightful)
So here's the math:
4,500 Gamestop/EB Games (some outside of North America)
3,256 Wal-Marts (USA stats only)
90 Rhino Video Games
786 Best Buys (US and Canada)
118 Future Shops (Canada)
32 Fry's Electronics (US)
635 Circuit Cities (US)
1447 Targets (US)
700 Toys 'r' Us (US stats only)
1 Nintendo World (New York City)
To come out with 11,565 possible Launch stores in North America. Of course, this doesn't include smaller chains and family owned businesses, but the results that will come from 1,000,000/11565 should give us a rough estimate on how many Wii's will be available at Launch in most stores.
It comes out at about 86 Wiis per store if we were to only include those chains. Of course, there will not be 86 wiis available at your local Wal-Mart in Hicksville, USA (or Canada), but it's nice to know that, if Wii distribution were communist, every major store would have 86 of them.
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I actually wanted to respond because your post is the closest thing I've ever seen to real analysis of the videogame market that I have personally seen on a website/forum.
I used to work in the industry and handled analysis as well as retail relations and I always find it funny how many armchair analysts and experts are on the web. And woe-be-me if I try to talk real sense and numbers... all you get are "STFU Show me links!!!" or other such nonsense. I've all but given up trying to eve
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