Wii will cost $200 say spectators

How do you get stars on here?
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crap...that doesnt look like one... Does someone vote on who gets stars?

It doesnt matter what it's going to be at launch. Retailers are going to bundle it up to $500.

YOU know i dont understand gaming anymore its not what it used to be. Everyone is pointing fingers on if he plays kiddie games, which i say its all about fun. Back then no one said you were playing a kiddie game, when you saw a GROW-UP man playing pac-man or any other game. STOP whinning about if the system sells for this much 'im not buying it',but believe me you are going to run into someone either a friend or a friends friend when you hang out and find a wii in his house. The name wii that people have been making fun of GROW-UP stop thinking like a little kid because of the name . You say we play kiddie games but act like 2 year olds when you hear the name wii. Im 26 i have played every system owed some sega,nintendo,sony played xbox at my friends house. Its just stupid when you hear people arent buying it because of the price ,if you want something you get it if not dont.today all we like is graphics nothing more nothing less but when some new ideas come in. People are afraid of change,live with it change is good. I have nothing bad to say about the 360 or ps3 but it all again graphics, please someone follow what an idea of what im trying to say ,sorry if theres any wrong spelling.

If nintendo's telling me to save my Gamecube controllers, they might as well package it with a wavebird or something. And maybe an updated one with rechargable batteries and rumble.

"$200 for the N64!!! are you fricking kidding me! Over here in the UK it was £399 GBP...thats like $750."

I bought an N64 at launch for 175UKP. Nobody actualy paid those prices did they?? Some of you really need to shop around.

If the Wii sells for 250UKP you can bet money that some shops will sell it for 200UKP anyway and just make money on the games bought. Happens all the time in the UK... Pity I live in Norway now!

I can understand a nunchuk and Connect24 coupons, but two nunchucks, a classic-style shell, a free game, and download credits? That'd just be poking a hole in the waterbutt.

#48(Caleb); As far as I know, some people have the ability to add stars. Most don't.

@Caleb and anyone else who needs to know:
Stars are given by the Joystiq staff for how well your add and pertain to the subject at hand along.

I believe the WII will go for $249.99 @ launch with 2 wiimotes and Wii Sports, plus 1 free download of a Nintendo designed game of the original nes,snes,or n64.

or

They will launch a basic package for $179.99 with only 1 wiimote and nothing else!

"$250 with 2 controllers and Wii Sports packed in. That's my official guess. Plus a few gold coins credit (the type of currency used in Wii online transactions). Enough to buy a NES game."

I'd say this a pretty good guess, and share this prediction. Either this, or a $200 bare bones launch (1 controller, no game).

I think some of the speculation here (and I realize, much of it is in jest) reminds me of the movie, "The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest", where a team of four or five engineers end up creating a small cylindrical device that acts as a PC, software included, with a manually manipulatable holographic display, which retails for $99.

No. No no no no. Bare bones would be $150. If they include ap ack in game and an extra controller, $200. No more. It will not cost more than that.

I think that there is a case to be made that it will sell for under 200 dollars.
Every nintendo console prior to the wii was launched at around 200 dollars, and some say the same will be true for the wii launch. There is a difference though. The $200 launch price of each of those previous consoles reflected the costs of manufacturing a machine that represented the latest in graphics technology. Keep in mind that nintendo has always had a steadfast policy of making a profit on all their console sales, unlike their competitors. Thus, while the cost of manufacturing each previous console at their launch is unknown, we do know that it must have been less than 200 dollars.

The Wii, on the other hand, will not have the latest in graphics technology, and it will probably be the cheapest console that nintendo ever had to manufacture. Thus, there is good reason to speculate that the will could release for less than 200 dollars, and still make a profit to boot.

And if they really wanted, the could take the strategy of the other companies and sell their console for less than cost of manufacturing just to get market share. If they took that as far as Sony does, Nintendo would probably pay us to get a wii.

50 dollar wii, HURRAY!!

while i'm looking forward to the PlayStation 3 more, i can actually see myself picking up a Wii at launch.

i would probably not ever buy a Microsoft or Sony console at launch, as they tend to be more prone to problems.. Nintendo, however, always seems to have the highest QUALITY systems. way less reports of issues, and very durable :).

so yeah.. if the Wii launched at 200 bucks, i'd probably pick one up the week it came out.

One way or the other, the Nintendo Wii will sell for $199.99.

Either Nintendo announces a price of $199.99, or......

Nintendo is dumb, and announces a price of $249.99, then the very next day, Microsoft announces a price drop of the 360 core console to $229.99, thus "FORCING" Nintendo to immediately drop the price of the Wii to $199.99.

One way or the other, the Wii will come out at $199.99.(or less) The only question is whether Nintendo wants to come to that price point the "easy" way, or the "hard" way.

It'll be a $250 launch.

With the state the US economy is in and the low value of the dollar, a $200 launch would be suicide. Thats just over £100 for gods sake.

To #5 (Clint):

2 reasons why Sony cannot do so:

1) Legal: Nintendo's total motion detection device is presumely copyrighted. If Sony were to pull such a stunt, Sony will be sued. (and anything less than total motion detection would be a gimmic, right?)

2) Technical: The Wii probably have specialized chips to handle the complex motion detection routines. If you were to emulate that in software, your processing power for everything else would go way down, think PS1 standards, or even lower. If you were to develope external hardware to do the processing, it would be too cost-prohibitive: you've to buy 2 pirces of hardware to get the same functionality, even without games.

some tool at GameStop rudely informed me that the Wii will cost $150 (after i inquired as to whether or not he knew the release date of the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.. to which he immediately replied, "September 2". yeah. i'll bet NINTENDO might like to have that knowledge. anyway..). he stated that the store's "Nintendo person" informed them that morning (oh how convenient.. lying bitch) that the price of the console would be 150. he then accused me of hating Nintendo, because apparently all i like to do is "bash them" (even though the full extent of any conversation between us EVER was "hey.. any idea when twilight princess is coming out?" "september 2" "LIAR!").

in conclusion, GameStop is made up mostly of dickheads and lifeless dildos (ignore the fact that the majority of dildos do NOT, in fact, contain life). oh, and the Wii will apparently be $150. so i guess i'll pick it up with Twilight Princess on Sept. 2. riiiight.

i hate gamestop. i wish i didn't support them.. but wal-mart doesn't have Guitar Hero and Shadow of the Colossus..

I grow tired of these random anti-Gamestop ramblings. Let's not paint with broad strokes, shall we? I'm an employee of this store you apparently love to hate and you should have some things pointed out to you: we're all gamers. All of us. And we love to be cool with the customers. However, some of you can be abrasive and prickish too. Some of you pick up titles from one section and leave it some place else. Put shit back where you got it from. Some of you pay for things with a checkbook...a checkbook! Get a debit card, homie. It's 2006. Some of you let your kids run around the joint as if it were Chuck E Cheese. We're not babysitters, shitdicks. Some of you even try to play us for fools and tell us blatant lies like "I have a friend in Japan and he already has the PS3." Awful.

And as far as ANY Nintendo rep letting the launch date out to a retailer, I simply don't think so. There's no reason why a lowly rep of a company would be told sensitive information when there are people, in higher ranking corporate positions, whose job it is to inform all retail channels properly of such things when the timing calls for it. And that timing comes from the top, over in Japan. If anybody knows anything about the launch date, I gather it would be someone who resides in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Last but not least, I like some of these guesses. I'm especially hoping for the following configuration: one console, 2 controllers w/ nunchuck attachment, Wii Sports (or at least a Duck Hunt demo disk) and some Virtual console credits for no more than $250.

Give me that same package for $200 and it's an absolute no-brainer for me.

*crosses fingers*

I guess a $300 package with 2 controllers, wii sports, a classic controller AND Twilight princess, possibly with the wii greenish in color or something

I'm putting a 60% chance on $250, 40% chance on $200.

They can afford to charge $250 since Microsoft has very little experience delivering good 1st and 2nd party games, reducing the value of the 360 sharply. Sony has delivered lots of good games in the past, but PS3 costs too much -- by a longshot. I'm sure Nintendo is very confident in their system. Plus, they can't afford to look like the "cheap" machine this time around. At $200, you can expect a very short lifespan. Given Moore's Law, even casual gamers know Nintendo is going cheap, because they really, really enjoy making money on the hardware at launch. I see Nintendo as the Apple of the gaming industry. They're good at packaging.

The multiformat slot-loading drive adds some cost, undoubtedly. There's a reason why virtually no slot-loading drives exist that can accept 6cm discs. Plus, 512MB of flash memory isn't really all that cheap from a mass-manufacturing point of view. $250 becomes very realistic with the complete form factor in mind.

Then again, maybe they'll charge $200 for Wii, and pull a GBA->DS. Wii could be around for three years, then they'll redesign it with yet another "tuned-up" GPU and some new controller features. Not enough to be considered a next-gen system or cause the games not to work on Wii, but just a few "special features" that are exclusive to the redesign. I'm sure by now, everybody knows add-ons don't sell, so why not just repackage with added value? No law exists that a system has to have a 6 year lifespan, and its obvious that Wii won't be around as long as the 360 or PS3.

I don't buy this garbage that Nintendo has spent a ton of money on R&D, either. According to rumors, the GPU is an overclocked Flipper with R520 add-ons, not a whole new GPU core. Calling it the RN520 is probably only a marketting gimick. There's probably some, but little, R520 technology in Hollywood. Redesigning a geometry core is tricky business, but adding pixel shaders and a more accurate texture engine to an existing core is no big deal. Sony did that with the PSX emulator in the PS2, to support filtered textures without breaking backwards compatibility.

Also note that there has to be headroom for the accessories. It's possible (though unlikely) that the built-in flash memory is exclusive for Virtual Console, and you'll still have to buy memory cards for game saves. Wii does support well-concealed SD memory cards, after all. You also need to buy the Virtual Console controller seperately (which isn't really wireless, BTW). There's no Ethernet port (*REALLY STUPID*), so most people don't have compatible wireless Internet in their homes (about 90% of the market) will be tempted by the Ethernet adapter, another source of cash. Nintendo also isn't using some expensive Lithium batteries for the remote. I wonder if Nintendo will consider $200, just so people can afford to buy tons of AA bateries or a charging kit. :)

I see a lot of cost cutting here that could justify a $200 price. But, Nintendo is in a position where they can certainly push for $250. If $250 is an issue, they can always bundle things, or drop the price, but if they charge $200, there's nothing they can do other than delay price drops, which is not wise.

Persionally, I vote for $250, but it's a close call.

LOL at all those fanboys that were shouting for $150. Not a chance in hell! :)

I would buy a Wii for $500. So it just tickles me to know that it will at LEAST be under $300. I'm getting it. Not at launch, because I don't want to wait in the bloody line, but I'm getting it.

PS3 and 360 will have to wait until the price drops. ESPECIALLY PS3. I'd pay 300 for a PS3. Even though it's just an upgraded PS2 with a rip-off motion controller. Better graphics = a little more money.

As far as the 360... That is DEFINITELY a must-have, because DOA 4 Oblivion and Halo 3 among others will be there.

Plus, the Wii will have Mario, Zela, Smash bros, all that good stuff... Definitely going with the Wii here.

150-180 squid.

I seriously doubt the system will retail for more than $199, and the thing is, even at that price they need to pack in extras to make it worth the price.

Think about this, every Nintendo console has launched at $200. Factoring in inflation, this has made each system about 10 to 20 percent cheaper than the last. At the same time, each one after the NES was at least 10x as powerful as its predecessor and had at least 10x the RAM.

Wii breaks this tradition, as it's only about twice as powerful as the Gamecube, and has about twice the RAM. In fact, from what I've heard, Wii's graphics hardware is basically a tweaked version of Gamecube's with a faster clock speed.

For a couple of years now, Nintendo has sold Gamecube hardware bundles for $100 that include the system, a game, and two controllers. Since the chipset in the Wii is basically an overclocked version of Gamecube's, it should cost about the same, and since the manufacturing process is being switched to 90nm, it will very likely cost less. There is possibly some extra cost in the added forty-some megs of RAM, but with memory costs what they are these days, it wouldn't be much. Wii also includes a Wifi chip and 512 megs of flash, but you can buy Nintendo's Wifi adapter and a 512 meg USB memory card for $60, which is what the game and extra controller included in the GC bundle would cost if purchased separately.

So, it seems to me anyway, that even if the new tech in the controller adds nearly $50 to the cost of the system, they could still sell the Wii for $150 and not lose money on it.

At $200, Nintendo could afford to add a Virtual Console controller(which really ought to be included, because you apparently can't play VC games, a major selling point, without it), and maybe some software, like Wii Sports, or some vouchers for free VC games.

The new controller looks cool, and seems to have a lot of potential, but I don't think that in itself, it's enough to justify doubling the cost of the system.

I'm going to hope it is just expensive enough to price fair weather wiinies out on release, so I can get my hands on one without having to wade through a release day riot.

My initial thought was $250, one wiimote + nunchuk. If it is truly as cheap to manufacture as people say, maybe 250 with two remotes with nunchuks. Classic controller looks awkward, all attached to the wiimote--I'm sticking with a GC controller.