Oh Nintendo, you sure know how to make a fanboy purr. A $250 price tag for the Wii? Don’t mind if I do! And you’re throwing in a sports game that utilizes the motion-sensing controller as a pack-in, your first since we last saw Super Mario World bundled with the SNES? Huzzah! What’s this? A console navigational system of “channels”, offering weather, news and web access, ala the Xbox 360’s “blades”? Not as inventive, but cool nonetheless!
Honestly, right now Nintendo could announce that every Wii console has a one in five chance of causing cancer, but that still wouldn’t stop the onslaught of rabid Nintendo fan boys and girls from picking up their own console this November 19th. While I question their wisdom in launching the Wii a mere 2 days after Sony’s (supposed) Playstation 3 launch, it does ensure that they will be a major presence come Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, and consequently this holiday season.
On the other hand, guaranteeing that the U.S. gets the majority of the first-run consoles will go a long way towards improving Nintendo’s dismal reputation in the American console market. They have enough clout in Japan to survive a minor shortage there at launch, so it’s best that they concentrate on their weakest territories at first. According to 1up.com, Nintendo aims to ship 4 million Wii consoles worldwide before the end of 2006, with the U.S. getting most of them.
In terms of production alone, Nintendo is already killing Sony in the future marketplace. Sony just recently announced that they will be forced to delay the launch of the PS3 in Europe, Africa, and Australia (among other territories) until March 2007. In other words, they’ve delayed the PS3 everywhere in the world that isn’t America or Japan. They expect to ship nearly half of Nintendo’s estimates: 2 million units in the U.S. and Japan by the end of the year, with about 1.1-1.2 million of that batch coming to the U.S. From numbers alone we can infer that the Wii will end up with the larger install base by 2007.
Nintendo also seems to have picked the perfect price point for both consumers and their own benefit. $250 is significantly lower than the Xbox 360 at $400 or the PS3 at $600, which will make it a no-brainer purchase to casual gamers and uninformed parents. And while its $50 more than their traditional launch price the slightly higher price tag gives them a major advantage over their competitors: A console that makes a profit!
Traditionally, manufacturers sell new consoles at a loss. This helps to create a larger install base than would be possible if the hardware was unsubsidized. At launch, the Xbox 360 hardware probably cost upwards of $700, and estimates of the PS3 hardware put it close to $1,000. Manufacturers make this gamble hoping to eventually recoup their losses with game purchases and a dedicated user base. Sometimes, however, this doesn’t pay off—just look at the $4 billion (!) Microsoft lost with the original Xbox. (Wikipedia.org)
It doesn’t take a statistician to realize that the numbers are completely in favor of Nintendo at this point. They will be shipping nearly twice as many consoles and actually making a profit off of them as well! Sony will be shipping a quarter of the amount, and will lose hundreds of dollars with each unit sold. It’s a recipe of instant success for Nintendo, and one that will certainly help to restock their coffers after completely deserting the Gamecube two years ago.
Nintendo, it seems, is learning from its past mistakes. While it’s taken them two last-place consoles to figure this out, they’ve finally realized that they don’t have to play into the all too typical hardware-performance race to have a successful console. And while Nintendo is learning from their mistakes for the Wii, Sony is making pretty much every mistake possible with the PS3 launch. With only a few months left before the PS3 launch, we can only sit back with jaws dropped and faces stupefied: The Playstation 3, ladies and gentleman, is a shipwreck in progress.
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Amherst Bytes #30: Wii!
Oh Nintendo, you sure know how to make a fanboy purr. A $250 price tag for the Wii? Don’t mind if I do! And you’re throwing in a sports game that utilizes the motion-sensing controller as a pack-in, your first since we last saw Super Mario World bundled with the SNES? Huzzah! What’s this? A console navigational system of “channels”, offering weather, news and web access, ala the Xbox 360’s “blades”? Not as inventive, but cool nonetheless!
Honestly, right now Nintendo could announce that every Wii console has a one in five chance of causing cancer, but that still wouldn’t stop the onslaught of rabid Nintendo fan boys and girls from picking up their own console this November 19th. While I question their wisdom in launching the Wii a mere 2 days after Sony’s (supposed) Playstation 3 launch, it does ensure that they will be a major presence come Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, and consequently this holiday season.
On the other hand, guaranteeing that the U.S. gets the majority of the first-run consoles will go a long way towards improving Nintendo’s dismal reputation in the American console market. They have enough clout in Japan to survive a minor shortage there at launch, so it’s best that they concentrate on their weakest territories at first. According to 1up.com, Nintendo aims to ship 4 million Wii consoles worldwide before the end of 2006, with the U.S. getting most of them.
In terms of production alone, Nintendo is already killing Sony in the future marketplace. Sony just recently announced that they will be forced to delay the launch of the PS3 in Europe, Africa, and Australia (among other territories) until March 2007. In other words, they’ve delayed the PS3 everywhere in the world that isn’t America or Japan. They expect to ship nearly half of Nintendo’s estimates: 2 million units in the U.S. and Japan by the end of the year, with about 1.1-1.2 million of that batch coming to the U.S. From numbers alone we can infer that the Wii will end up with the larger install base by 2007.
Nintendo also seems to have picked the perfect price point for both consumers and their own benefit. $250 is significantly lower than the Xbox 360 at $400 or the PS3 at $600, which will make it a no-brainer purchase to casual gamers and uninformed parents. And while its $50 more than their traditional launch price the slightly higher price tag gives them a major advantage over their competitors: A console that makes a profit!
Traditionally, manufacturers sell new consoles at a loss. This helps to create a larger install base than would be possible if the hardware was unsubsidized. At launch, the Xbox 360 hardware probably cost upwards of $700, and estimates of the PS3 hardware put it close to $1,000. Manufacturers make this gamble hoping to eventually recoup their losses with game purchases and a dedicated user base. Sometimes, however, this doesn’t pay off—just look at the $4 billion (!) Microsoft lost with the original Xbox. (Wikipedia.org)
It doesn’t take a statistician to realize that the numbers are completely in favor of Nintendo at this point. They will be shipping nearly twice as many consoles and actually making a profit off of them as well! Sony will be shipping a quarter of the amount, and will lose hundreds of dollars with each unit sold. It’s a recipe of instant success for Nintendo, and one that will certainly help to restock their coffers after completely deserting the Gamecube two years ago.
Nintendo, it seems, is learning from its past mistakes. While it’s taken them two last-place consoles to figure this out, they’ve finally realized that they don’t have to play into the all too typical hardware-performance race to have a successful console. And while Nintendo is learning from their mistakes for the Wii, Sony is making pretty much every mistake possible with the PS3 launch. With only a few months left before the PS3 launch, we can only sit back with jaws dropped and faces stupefied: The Playstation 3, ladies and gentleman, is a shipwreck in progress.