Wii: then and now

by Ludwig Kietzmann on Sep 14th 2006 8:45PM

"People change. Hairstyles change. Interest rates fluctuate." When Hillary Flammond uttered those words in Top Secret, she clearly hadn't experienced the gaming industry -- a marvelous, often magical place where things change very quickly indeed. As today's cataclysmic explosion of Wii news demonstrates, things can change for better or for worse. Yesterday's truth may become today's obsolete press release. So, what has (and hasn't) changed for Nintendo between then and now?

Then: The Wii could play DVDs via an unspecified and entirely nebulous dongle. The original console description reads: "Two Disc Formats, One Slot: Instead of a tray, a single, innovative, self-loading media bay will play both 12-centimeter optical discs used for the new system as well as Nintendo GameCube discs. Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content."
Now: Inserting a DVD into the system will likely produce a polite error message indicating a complete inability to play DVDs. Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan explains DVD playback was removed "in order to deliver the machine at a cheaper cost and because most people today already own DVD players." On the plus side, this reduces the amount of times we'll have to type a dubious word like "dongle."

Then: In January 2006, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata tells Japanese newspapers that the Wii should launch in the US by Thanksgiving. "As for North America, we need to release it by Thanksgiving, or otherwise we won't receive support from the retail industry."
Now: Launching on Nov. 19, Nintendo makes it with a few days to spare. Show some gratitude, will ya?

Then: Scott Hedrick, Executive VP of Opera for Devices, confirms that the Wii version of the browser "will not be sold as a seperate item." He also explains that software will come loaded on the system.
Now: The Opera browser is no longer built-in and no longer free -- it will be sold as a seperate item through the Wii's internet channel for an unknown number of Wii Points. [Update: Only if you haven't downloaded it by June 2007. Phew!]

Then: At E3 2006, a whole host of new features are revealed for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Though the Wii version boasts a different control scheme, it will be released on the same day as the Gamecube adventure.
Now: The Wii's Twilight Princess is still on track for launch, whereas the Gamecube (reminder: the platform the game was originally developed for) is forced to wait until December 11th. Sure, that makes sense. Not implementing a widescreen mode must be trickier than we were previously lead to believe.

Then: Speaking at a news conference in Osaka, a Nintendo senior managing director makes it apparent that the Wii would launch in America for no more than $250. That particular statement would go on to fuel a ludicrous amount of speculation.
Now: Well, he wasn't lying. The Wii launch price comes in at $249.99, a full cent below the upper limit of truth.

Then: In March 2006, Satoru Iwata tells CNN all about the USB ports on the Wii and how "practically any storage method can be used" in lieu of SD cards and the 512MB of internal storage.
Now: Perrin Kaplan empties her Magnum into that idea, telling Wired News' Joel Johnson that only flash storage will be supported. Iwata's suggestion becomes relegated to something Nintendo "could" explore in the future. This "future" place we keep hearing about sounds fantastic.

Then: Retro Studios assures IGN that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will attend the inevitably debaucherous Wii launch party.
Now: A quick glance at the confirmed launch party list reveals that Metroid Prime 3 has not been invited. It's been delayed until 2007, and no amount of pleasantly worded paragraphs can hide our resulting bitterness.

Tags: Legend of Zelda, LegendOfZelda, marketing, Metroid Prime, MetroidPrime, Nintendo Wii, NintendoWii, Twilight Princess, TwilightPrincess, Wii, Wii DVD, Wii launch, Wii price, WiiDvd, WiiLaunch, WiiPrice

Reader Comments (123)

If Nintendo offered it for higher than $250, you'd have a very valid argument that Nintendo lied to you. As it stands, they didn't. You've had since May (or maybe even earlier? I forget) to brace yourself for a possible $250 price tag. Now that it's here, and it's not less than $200 like some people figured, it's NOT a travesty. It's a logical step, and a smart business move.

I agree that not including two controllers is a bit of a shame, but from the looks of it, they really couldn't if they wanted to keep it under $250. Nintendo's business model is obviously to sell things at a profit; and I imagine their profit, even on a $250 Wii package such as this, is not very substantial, so it's not like they could just cut into their profits to include another Wiimote. You may not like their business model, but it's probably a good thing you aren't in charge of finances for Nintendo.

It may be a hard pill to swallow to buy another Wiimote at $40 (remember, Wii sports doesn't require the Nunchuk attachment, if you're only concerned about the Wii Sports packin encouraging multiplayer play), but that's just what the technology costs. I'd rather spend $60 on a complete controller and $50 on each game, than the other way around!

And I think $250 is quite easily in the "layman"'s budget, more than you might think. It may not be an impulse buy, but remember, Nintendo thinks playing = believing. Once they play it at a friend's house, it won't really be an impulse buy. It'll be something they want to have, and $250 is a good price for that.

Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinion. Don't buy a Wii at $250 then. Doesn't affect me at all. If you think Nintendo has betrayed you here, or what they've done is just PR suicide, that's your call. But they will sell all the Wiis they can ship this year, and I'll be getting one for myself.

What worries me is that the Wii is just a turbo charged gamecube but that additional power will all be used up getting it running at 480p and in Widescreen therefore the graphics will look pretty much the same as the original gamecube. I have yet to see anything that much better than what we saw on the GC.

Call me a graphics whore all you want!!

Then: multiple colors on launch.
Now: Only white at lauch.
- I'm not much fan on the iPod like console, ds lite white included. We want the black wii...

At least they didn't lie about it's capabilities, unlike Sony.

Sony said gaming in 1080P. Developers say the PS3 isn't powerful enough.
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/sony/no-1080p-for-ps3-games-198852.php

The PS3 is the PS2 all over again. Sony said the PS2 would be capable of Toy Story quality graphics. Sony said the PS2's radical Emotion Engine was a supercomputer, an order of magnitude more powerful than a PC. Their "Emotion Engine" turned out to be a crippled version of a MIPS CPU, and wasn't even as fast as a decent PC's processor at the time of release. And I'm still waiting on those Toy Story quality graphics.

Sony is spewing the exact same hype and rhetoric around the PS3's and it's Cell processor as they said about the PS2 and it's Emotion Engine. So don't be surprised when the PS3's power fails to live up to the lies, just like the PS2.

Here's the problem. Everybody had alarmingly high hopes for this console. They wanted it to do everything for the cost of nothing. Then yesterday, everyone was brought back to reality. But, the reality is still really close to the impossible that everyone had set for the console. And I think that in it's self is amazing and shows that the Wii is still amazing.

Wii to launch in Europe Dec 8th. €250. That's about $316 , what a RIP!!

I really don't know what is certain people complaining about. Release date?? C'mon guys, it's absolutely ready for Xmas. And don't even get me started with the PS3...

The "Can't play DVDs" issue isn't really that important, today absolutely everything can playback a DVD. I preffer to keep the console cheaper rather than having ANOTHER DVD reproducer. And besides that, what prevents Wii from playing DVD-movies is a hardware decoder, not software limitations like many of you said.

The Games? So the only one missing for release date is Metroid. Much better, you can really enjoy the rest of the games. Don't forget about Red Steel of Zelda, both look amazing.

No Opera-for-free issue: c'mon, honestly I wanna surf the net with my keyboard and mouse. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even put an Intener option in a console, just the Nintendo downloads service and updates (maybe some other things too), but really don't wanna surf the web with a console.

Whether or not DVD support is actually useful is besides the point of this post. It IS a change in Nintendo's original plans. Also, I fail to see how some of you are registering the launch date and price points as complaints. The post asks what has and what HASN'T changed. Those two did not change - hence that's a good thing. Neglecting to mention that would have made the article unbalanced.

For those saying Sony is just as guilty -- GIANT ENEMY CRAB. You can't honestly believe that Sony's actions have gone unnoticed. Not that shifting the blame changes anything. This post doesn't even mention the word "lie" once. :)

Okay, I'm on board the Disappointment Train about Metroid Prime 3. But you know what? It's going to come out. It's not like they cut the product. It's just not going to be ready at launch. Fans of the Prime series know that it's meticulously complex. And yeah, it sucks that we all have to wait (I'm the level of Metroid fan that has Samus's Entry and Item Collection music on his cell phone as text and voice message notifications). But I'd rather wait until March for a brilliant game than get a pretty good game in November.

Now, that said, who the frig cares about playing DVDs on their Revolution (again, still not using that new name, sorry Nintendo). Was this a selling point for ANYONE? You can buy a DVD player from Best Buy for, hell, for practically free at this point. Besides, the Revolution would make a piss poor DVD player because it doesn't do higher resolution progressive scan. The average DVD player would probably cost LESS than the dongle attachment thingie. Look at it this way, now you have a reason to keep your crappy PS2 DVD player around while you're trying to figure out if you can stomach buying a PS3 for six hundred large.

Likewise, I'm not gung-ho about browsing the internet on my game consoles either. I'm actually much more excited about Opera for the DS (because I can bring it with me). If Opera had been a freebie for the Revolution, I'd likely have used it. But since it's going to cost. . . meh. I'll walk the twelve feet to one of my computers. Seriously, the browser would have to roll in at ten bucks, fifteen max, for me to even consider it. I think that's a shame, since Nintendo could have claimed out-of-the-box internet browsing. That would have been a leg up on Microsoft (and Sony, as best I know). Ah well. At least the actual gaming service is completely free.

I'm the biggest Metroid fan on the planet. (Yes it's true, just live with it). and I'm kind of glad Metroid got pushed back. There will be so much to play on Wii when it comes out, that now I can look forward to SMG and Metroid in the near future.

"What worries me is that the Wii is just a turbo charged gamecube but that additional power will all be used up getting it running at 480p and in Widescreen therefore the graphics will look pretty much the same as the original gamecube."

Uh, the original GameCube could already do 480P Widescreen. Seriously. I do it all the time. Unfortunately, most developers require me to stretch the screen because they only support 4:3, but not all of them. There were a handful of games smart enough to support proper widescreen mode. The most visible of those was F-Zero GX. . . which looked very pretty, featured an insane number of on-screen vehicles, and moved crazy, crazy, crazy fast. So, the GameCube has 480P Widescreen right out of the old box. It's worth keeping in mind.

There were a lot of let down on this Wii: First off-No DVD playback, that was one of tha reasons i wuz gonna get it opposed to tha PS3 who has BluRay (meaning i have to get all nu DVDs to b compatable). It seems the XBox360 has them all beat rite now. Next- The suppose to b free internet. With the WiFi technology there is no reason to not integrate it for free. Again that was goin to be one of the selling points for me since u have to pay for XBox Live and have to have an existing DSL connection (which i dont have). So in this category it seems PS3 has won with their free Sony Online capability. Lasty- The price, which i am happy with but i wish they would have done good on all their promises and increased the price a little if neccessary. Its better to pay $300 buying it all at once than have to purchase expensive add-ons and download programs w/ "Wii Points" which is just more money charged to your credit card; by tha end of all that u prolly pay more than 300. Well, NEway, imma buy it no matter what i am just a little disappointed with the final decisions of Nintendo. i mite actually buy the 360 this year (esp. wit all tha nu titles they're gonna release in Nov to fight the nu consoles...and Halo 3 in '07!) and wait to get the Wii next Spring. Oh, well...

Two things about that above list:

1.) While it was a surprise that Metroid Prime 3 wouldn't make it to the launch, it shuoldn't have beem -too- much of a surprise for anyone who knows anything about Nintendo's perfectionism.

2.) The Opera browser will be free until the end of June 2007, at least, in Japan. You can see my proof on GoNintendo's site:
http://gonintendo.com/?p=5592

I posted my source 6 comments down.

Now is our turn to laugh you stupid wiitards, Nintendo doesn't seem so nice anymore. They are just like ms hiding under a supposedly low price, but charging you for things that should be included. Paying 250.00 for a supercharged gamecube and a gimmicky controller is just dumb.

That whole story could not be more biased against Nintendo if you tried, and im assuming you did try

Nintendo has said that the Opera could be free or downloaded. They were still talking to Opera about it at the time.

The USB storage has always been stated as a possiblity. In fact the recent comments indicate it could come at a later date. Odds are they found a few issues. Keep in mind the Wii has an upgradeable OS system so hard drive support could be added in at a later date when it was truly ready.

Keep in mind that software is a tricky issue just recently it was found that the Sony rootkit when ran on a computer with a certain anti-virus/spyware application would cause the cd-rom drive to lockup permently.

You don't know what issues Nintendo found out when they were testing the Wii stuff. Would you rather have people's hard drives being locked up by the Wii?

The VC prices are what gives the royalty owners their cash and makes it desirable for them to put the titles on the vc. Jesus there is still cost issues quite a number of past games still have not paid off their licensing and development costs. So would you rather a constant stream say ten a month at the least of working perfectly possibly upgraded games or a bare trickle say two every month of barely functioning games? Seriously get your head out of your butt and think about the vc prices. For those that know business and the common public Five dollars is more then fair for the mass market people who will be buying the wee. Hell people paid ten bucks for Joust on the xbla or five dollars for pac-man on a cell phone. Heck hundreds of thousands of people bought Metroid for the GBA when Metroid Zero has the original game in it with a brand new game for the same price as the Metroid classic on GBA. Hordes of people are saying they will plunk down five bucks for Sonic 1 when guess what he is on a compliation disc with several other sonic games for just under 20 bucks.

Did you think Nintendo didn't do research on the price structure/inferstructure to support the Nintendo online serice and how to get the games on it? No they researched it Five dollars was the best price point for NES games they found.

Also the damn vc prices pay for the Wiiconnect24 content or would you rather pay a subscription fee/be infested with ads?

Obviously you price complainers forget a great many things that the people picking up the Wii vc will pay for. Most people no longer have a NES/SNES/N64. They will not go to used game shops to get the console and games they will gladly pay the vc prices.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick you complainers will shit yourselves when the PSP download prices come about for the PS1 games. 15 dollars at the least from what Sony documents so far show. Yeah 15 dollars for PS1 games such as Final Fantasy VII and you bitchers will glady bend over for it since it is Sony.

Ben, please explain to me how this post is "biased."

"But is Nintendo so is okay to remove a few basic features and sell them separately."

Thats because Nintendo is the underdog and everyone loves the underdogs

I can accept the absence of DVD-playback (2 DVD-ROM drives on my PC, with my TV as a 2nd monitor = no problem), MP3 being delayed (hope it has online multiplayer, though) and the price. But $4 for NES games? That $4 (and the money from any other classic VC title) is virtually all profit for Nintendo. As far as I know, Nintendo is already going to make profit on the Wii itself, additional controllers, and whatever other peripherals they sell for the system (classic controller, gun shell, etc.); so why can't they at least make VC titles cheaper? Way cheaper. What the hell, Iwata?

...and what about this BS about launching before the Playstation 3? I can see this decision (even if it is only 2 days) coming back to bite Nintendo in the future.

Evozoku, I hope so. The "Photo" channel can play video that is stored on SD Card, but that was recorded on a digicam. The most common digicam video files are .avi or .mpeg, so my guess would be ya.

If you notice on Wii.com, there are still 2 unannounced Wii Channels. My brother and I think a Video Channel, and a Music Channel. Or, a Multimedia Channel, leaving another mystery channel...

Well, Im a Nintendo FanBoy, But i still gotta say......
Nintendo's Being a fatty.

I cant believe i just said that!
In this f*cked up world of The console wars, Xbox 360 is still doing pretty good, PS3 getting their asses kicked, and Wii is getting stranger by the second.

I do think that we should have a huge Then & Now compilation for all three next-gen systems. It would be interesting to see. Plus, a price and specs comparison.

If this is all theoretical (which it is, since Wii isnt out yet) then it is rather pointless to argue about all this.

I'm a huge audio-videophile, so I don't use anything "built-in" like the 360's, PS2's, or the one that's in my wife's tv.

But there are people like my wife that don't want to have to mess with stuff and have a list on the back of the remote for what video input is what she wants to watch. (again, I dont care, but there are...simpler people out there). Most people won't tell the difference on their tv's between DVD in a console or a $400+ dvd player, or a $30 one (which is closer to what console dvd playback is in reality).

I'm posting this from my computer. Who's using their 360 or xxxxxx console to post? hands?

So some people expected a huge media center Wii for $250. Why do you think 360's high end model to do everything is twice the price?

I agree with the different models being available. Though it wouldn't be lucrative for Nintendo really, it would be for people that want the media, and people (like me) who don't care and want it to play games as cheap as possible.

This isn't about fanboyism, it's about who wants to buy one and who doesn't. Everyone needs to grow up a little, I just came here to read the article through googling and it's pretty ridiculous how 'into' this debate everyone is.

Previous 50 Comments

Wii: then and now

Reader Comments (123)

Posted: Sep 15th 2006 4:37AM (Unverified) said

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