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Breaking News: Nintendo Wii Official Price - $249.99 in US
Nintendo Wii Controller and AttachmentIn a surprise move, Nintendo announced that the official price of the Wii in the US will be $249.99, which is actually $50 or more than many were predicting. "There is one price, one configuration and one color -- the same white Nintendo uses in its Nintendo DS." It is also expected to ship November 19th worldwide.
This will no doubt be dissapointing to some (to put it mildly), as the low end Microsoft Xbox 360 is priced at $299.99 and may drop a bit lower by November (the low end PS3 is expected to be $399.99). We'll see as events unfold and do a more complete value comparison once all three systems are actually released, but Nintendo superficially at least is not really offering superior value over the competition with what the Wii comes with and what a second controller set and games cost.
"The Wiimote has a MSRP of $39.99 and the nunchuk has an MSRP of $19.99 -- they are sold separately."
"Wii points [similar to Microsoft points] will be used to purchase Virtual Console titles. 100 Wii Points equals a dollar, NES titles cost 500 points ($5), SNES titles 800 points ($8) and Nintendo 64 titles cost 1000 points ($10)."
"Citing a series of quotes from developers supporting the Wii, Fils-Aime points out that 30 titles will be available in the launch-window, with about half of them available on day one. They will, as reported, retail for $49.99 (ten bucks less than [most third party] Xbox 360 titles)."
- Bill Loguidice's blog
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Comments
No region-free Wii? .... again Europe totally lucks out....
and again Europe will totally luck out.....
Videogames in Europe will never get any better I guess. The only console that actually offers the exact same range of software as it does in it's native region is the Xbox 360 in my experience.....
Ah, what happened to the days where a PAL C64 was more compatible with all the demo's and games than their NTSC counterparts. Where a 1Mhz PAL C64 set the standard and NTSC machines had to byte the dust ;)
Mwoehahahahaha
-= Mark Vergeer - Armchair Arcade editor =-
Better Late Than Never. :)
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Wii Price
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For me, this is mostly irrelevant. The last gen clearance sales will be keeping me entertained on the cheap for months. I'll watch the people lining up. I'll read about the shortages. I'll keep snagging cheap games. And by the time the price drops start hitting, I'll be ready.
Do I think the Wii will fail because of this price point? I doubt it, but I don't pretend to understand the broader market Nintendo's trying to appeal to.
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Virtual Console Prices
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If you can find me a cheaper copy of Super Smash Bros. for N64, reply ASAP. Likewise for Super Mario RPG. Earthbound, anyone? There are more than a few classic / rare games that will be bargains at these prices. As for "Home Improvement" for the SNES, I'm assuming they won't bother releasing terrible games.
I love everything to be cheaper, but these prices aren't outrageous. And if I'm in the minority in that opinion, Nintendo can always lower them.
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Virtual Control Accuracy
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Bill, I share your concerns about the Wiimote. But I'm also noting a disturbing parallel.
Control won't be spot on.
Telling exactly where you are will be a problem.
A lot of fudge factor coding will be required to make games playable.
This sounds like the move from 2D to 3D, and as we've all seen, the occasional cheap death is something players seem more than willing to tolerate if other aspects of the experience improve.
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Online Play
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I think you nailed this one, Bill. Wii will not try to do the community building or old game enhancements of Xbox Live and instead focus on letting you have a slightly richer experience with the few people you know well enough to bother exchanging friend codes with. It seems unlikely to affect Wii sales much either way.
Online Multiplayer Gaming and other Wii and even PS3 thoughts
Interestingly, reports are making the rounds that online multiplayer gaming on the Wii won't be available until after the first of the year, and maybe even longer for third parties. It's possible that none of the launch titles will be online-enabled. No word on how virtual console title upgrades will be affected, it at all (it's still up in the air how much, if any, Nintendo will update the old games). The other rumor is that a friends code system will still be implemented, perhaps even requiring a unique number for every game, just like the DS.
While none of the above is a system breaker, it would be dissapointing if proven true. Even on the PS3 there are reports that the next Tony Hawk will not be online enabled on it because the developers weren't given access to the right libraries/hooks in time. You would think this whole online thing would be worked out all the way around by this new generation, but I guess not...
In any case, we'll monitor all of the above. For my purposes, I'm REALLY holding out hope that the Wii will be able to use the same component video cables that the Gamecube uses, because apparently the Wii will only come with composite. That's fine for many people, but not good for those of us with decent TV's. I can frankly live without online multiplayer for a while as long as I can play the system with component cables and in a universal widescreen mode...
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[ My collection ]
[ http://www.MythCore.com ]
Region Locking
Even though it was Nintendo that got the regionalization ball rolling with the NES, that bit of news is not their fault. It was initially a misunderstanding that region locking would be a software setting that a particular developer could choose to activate or not. Obviously, as with all system, region locking will be pretty standard, save for the rare cases where developers leave a hook in to allow it to be playable anywhere (I can think of a few Xbox titles that do that). Region locking is more of a business case, not only for what Matt said, but also for the fact that different countries and territories have different licensing requirements, meaning that acquiring a license in the US for a particular association/title/event/whatever would not be applicable to say Europe or Japan. There's more to it, of course, but again, this is not something to get on Nintendo's case for other than getting the ball rolling back in late 1985...
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[ My collection ]
[ http://www.MythCore.com ]
Wii will NOT be region-free
The good news from Nintendo just keeps on coming. This just in: Will Now Confirmed to Not be Region-Free. I'm not sure how much difference this will make to the average Wii owner, but it will surely annoy and complicate things for the international market. Of course, it'll also allow Nintendo to freely sell the same games in poor countries for a fraction of the cost you'd pay in the US...
Gyration Mouse and others
Yes, I believe products like the Gyration Mouse fall into that middle category like the Wii-mote, while a device like the virtual/projection keyboard, shown here: http://www.millennia-3.com/virtualdevices/index2.htm , falls more into the full-blown virtual category, a la the Eye Toy. Again, regular mice and keyboards, even wireless ones, are purely traditional.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[ My collection ]
[ http://www.MythCore.com ]
A Gyration Mouse?
So, you'd consider my Gyration mouse a "virtual controller," since it uses internal gyroscopes to allow you to move a mouse pointer just by flicking your wrist around in the air?
I've been meaning to write a review of this mouse for some time. I haven't really tried to use it for many games (except for point and click games), but it might be interesting to try it out just to see what would happen. I've always thought it would make a fantastic controller for a fishing game (it is even shaped somewhat like a reel).
"Virtualization", "Virtual
"Virtualization", "Virtual Control", they're just terms I made up to describe what I was trying to get across. The ultimate type of virtualization is something like the Sony EyeToy (PS2) and GoGo TV console, where there's a camera placed on top of your television and in most cases the only control are your body movements. You're not pressing a button, you're not moving a stick, you're moving your body. These movements are detected as best as they can be and then translated to something happening on the screen. This is as opposed to traditional control where you press a button or move a stick and a relay translates exactly what you did to the console. There's no real interpretation, there's no guesswork. You move right, it immediately picks up that you moved right. With virtual control, it assumes as best it can that you want to move right through a form of triangulation and differences in light and color.
In between those two extremes are systems like the Xavix XaviXPort or the Nintendo Wii (and also the GoGo TV), where you use a physical prop or controller that you move in 3D space. There is enough technology for the physical controller to have its own intelligence to accurately relay button presses and stick movements and even acceleration, but the target system still has to determine the location that the controller is in 3D space, which again is an approximation. So while pressing a button on the Wii remote for instance will get you an instant response, moving the whole remote left and right with your arm gets that information approximately translated to the Wii system. The system tracks the controller as best it can, but without a 360 degree point of reference, it's not going to be "perfect" as if you moved a control stick left and right, nor as immediate.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[ My collection ]
[ http://www.MythCore.com ]
Virtual Controller?
Bill, it could be the combination of intense pain and codeine (I'm trying to survive a wisdom tooth crisis until my dentist's appt Wednesday!!), but I just don't understand what the term "virtual controller" really means. Can someone explain this concept?
Wireless Controllers
I too "thought" that the wireless controllers would be less accurate than their wired counterparts, but, as you state, I was wrong. I'm very, very impressed with the Xbox 360 wireless controllers. I even scrunch up in my lazy boy chair and the signal gets through with no problem. The batteries seem to last about 30 hours before needing to be changed, so I'm happy with that as well.
I'm still skeptical about the Wii controllers, but hey, I'll try them out as I "need" to have that system so I can play Metroid Prime 3.
Cheers