Haven’t seen this elsewhere on here yet:
Nintendo announce price cap on Wii
I figure they’ll cap it at 150 quid in the UK as its a nice round number. I was pretty much guaranteed to be buying one of these to sit along side my Xbox 360 anyway, but with a price tag like that it looks like i’ll be picking one up at launch rather than waiting for the first price drop.
What are everyone else’s thoughts?
What’s that work out to in US funds?
According to the quote, $250 or less.
Wow, that’s a damned sight better than Microsoft or Sony, but I’d still wait for the price drop, since it sounds like it could hit $100, which is the magic number as far as I wouldn’t blink dropping that on a new game system. Good for Wiiiii…. 
It’s been pointed out that I could buy a Wii and an XBox360 together for less than a PS3.
Which makes me wonder why the PS3 is supposed to be so much better than its the competition.
I’m still wagering Nintendo will release the Wii in the US for $199.
Because Sony have done a Sega and fallen in love with their own reputation (and we all know how that turned out).
Is it just me, or did the NES (you know, the original, way back when) cost $99.99 for its entire run? I know for sure that they did when I bought mine. Granted that modern consoles are much more advanced, but on the other hand, electronics in general have been steadily dropping in price for decades: A top-of-the-line home computer now would cost much less than a top-of-the-line home computer in the 1980s, despite being as far beyond those computers as a modern console is above an NES. So why do the modern consoles cost more?
I’m pretty sure that every Nintendo system has started at $199 or close to it. Wiki says that the original NES launched in two packages, one for $199 and one for $249.
Which means it is getting cheaper to buy a significantly improved product, even when brand-spanking new.
Look at it from the other side. Say you’ve are launching a popular game console. The last times you did this, they quickly sold out. Heck, people were paying double or triple the retail price on eBay because your factories can only churn out so many. Crunch some numbers and it’s not too hard to see if they launch at a high price, they can make a tremendous profit selling to the hardcore fans. Once those wallets are tapped out, they drop the price and sell to the regular folks. Sales closely match manufacturing output and profit is maximized.
If you want to be the first, you should expect to pay for that privelege, whether it’s at an amusement park, at the movie theatre, or for a PS3.
The PS2 was the first of its generation, by a lot. The PS3 is already behind and it’s 50% more expensive?!
The number of people willing to pay more than a PS3 should cost will be significantly less than Sony thinks.
I was going to get one…screw dat. I’m getting a Wiiiiiiiiii!
In the last generation (Xbox, PS2, Cube) Microsoft and Sony supposedly took a loss on every counsel they sold while Nintendo turned a profit. The explanations I herad for this was that selling at a loss allowed Microsoft/Sony to 1. increase market share and 2. turn a larger profit on games. The advantages to turning a profit on selling a consul despite being the industry underdog in terms of market share, on the other hand, are what allowed Nintendo to say in the business.
So the obvious question is: is anyone making a profit on this generation? Will 200-250$ be more then the Wii is worth in terms of parts?
From what I’ve heard, the Wii is the weakest of the three consules in terms of raw processor power. It’s strength is in its novel controller design, and the games you can build around it.
So it doesn’t surprise me that the Wii is the cheapest.
My guess would be that it’s not.
At E3, Nintendo had the demos running on Gamecubes. Now, I’m sure that there’s some heftier hardware in a Wii than a Gamecube, but it can’t be that much if they can run reasonable demos on the old hardware. And they’ve been profitably selling the 'Cube for $100 for a while now.
It seems that Nintendo has definitely not tried to pimp out the hardware in this generation.
It’s probably expensive because of the Blu-Ray technology. If it’s too costly, you should buy something else. I’m probably going to adopt a wait and see approach.
From what I’ve read, that’s exactly right. The Blu-Ray DVD adds something between $100 - $300 to Sony’s cost.
They’re making a big gamble with that, since while it seems to be the next-gen DVD accepted standard, there is still Toshiba’s HD-DVD fighting it out. Suck to be Sony if Blu-Ray becomes another Betamax.
Plus - how many people buy game consoles because they can play DVDs with them?
Not sure the PS3 is technologically behind - the Cell processor is supposed to be amazing, even if the graphics card included is more or less equal to the other consoles.
My guess is that the PS3 will have amazing graphics, better than the XBox 360, but not so significant that people will flock to it. It’s all about the games…and the price of the console.
One of the reasons for the PS2’s success was that it included a DVD player while at the same time not being anymore expensive then a standalone DVD player, so it was basically a freebee.
Sony seems to be gambling the same thing will happen here, but I think they’re miscalculating in assuming that Blu-ray will be as popular now as DVD was becoming when PS2 first appeared.
The Dreamcast came out a year and a half before the PS2.
So when’s the Dreamcast 2 coming out?