By Captain N on Aug 25, 2009

No I think this holiday season we will see the release of the Black Wii which will help boost sales again and then after that they will drop the price by 50 bucks to $200. Thats what I would do anyway

By JoshZTP2 on Aug 25, 2009

First off Analysts don’t know anything; I’ve had enough of them since… um, like forever!!!

And practically just about everybody has a Wii; DUH!!

And if Nintendo wasn’t SO SECRETIVE; then we WON’T EVER get a PRICE CUT if Nintendo EVER OFFICIALLY announced one!!

But the only OBVIOUS conclusion a PRICE DROP would ever bring, (to those OBLIVIOUS CRAZED IDIOTIC FANBOYS); would only be down by $50 and to $200… like everyone keeps saying/prediting!!

By Ponkotsu on Aug 25, 2009

Yeah, as usual, the analysts are still fixated on the idea of the Wii being a conceptual “bubble” waiting to burst, prompting the competition to spring forward into mass market popularity. Something that’s been established as not happening by now.

Sean Malstrom’s written a lot of good articles on the price cut issue, but what it largely comes down to is product value as perceived by the market and momentum. Whenever you cut the price, you’re acknowledging a lower value for said product: the PS3 and 360 have very little sales momentum now (The PS3 nearly none at this point), and continue to sell poorly even after taking price cuts, getting only brief boosts then from people who waited for the product to drop to a price point mirroring the product’s perceived value. Both the high def consoles hurt themselves right out the door with ridiculously high initial price points, the businessmen behind the products making the assumption that the consumer would cater to THEIR wants and needs, and that the relationship wasn’t the other way around (As it always has been). Hubris hurt both these systems and reduced their momentum greatly from the start. (On top of selling these systems still at a loss, failing to compensate for hardware issue that – in the 360′s case in particular – plagued them for years, and ultimately designing these platforms for unsustainably high development costs, essentially demanding a bigger and more ravenous audience than even the PS2 had in order to become successful and sustainable.) Development costs and hardware issues created all kinds of problems for third parties – who in many cases opted to listen to the businessmen at Sony and MS as opposed to actually watching market trends and looking at what CONSUMERS want in order to do good business – and they simply failed to deliver the software (The most important aspect of any game system) to match the exorbitant price points of these consoles. As sales began to grind down, they started cutting the cost – displaying increasing brand weakness – of their systems to get slight sales bumps, but even as the HD consoles’ prices have dropped, neither the first nor third parties on those systems have provided the compelling software to match their price points (Even with a 360 SKU cheaper than the Wii, which didn’t meaningfully spur hardware sales despite the divide), and at this point, the market isn’t all that interested in either of those platforms anymore. Most gamers – who don’t read blogs like this or even keep up with gaming news online – own one console per generation, and the masses chose the Wii years ago, the controls and what they offered for gameplay selling them on its $250 value right out the door. Hence years of selling out and largely strong software sales that defeat the “hardcore” claims you see online that the Wii is purchased solely as a “Wii Sports machine.” Even Nintendo Channel data collected has shown – along with sales – that there’s a strong RPG audience on the system. The Wii has achieved a kind of momentum no console in the industry’s history has ever seen, and all without cutting the price even once. The reality of things is, they’re nowhere near saturated enough nor lacking in momentum in any way (Especially compared to their competitors) to in any way need a price cut. If anything, a price cut anytime soon would tell consumers to hold out longer for even more (As both HD systems effectively had with their near-routine price cuts in recent years.), when it’s also well established at this point that all you really need to do in order to sell more Wiis at this point is to make good, big name games on the system and properly MARKET them. This is something Nintendo has succeeded at, rolling out hit after hit, while the third parties still largely haven’t tried. Few third parties have advertised their Wii games, let alone given them anything close to the kind of push or hype they deserved, then they had the gall to complain when games they put little effort into underperformed. Well-marketed games have always sold well on the Wii, while the media’s tried to use inherently niche titles like MadWorld to claim “big core games don’t sell,” when even in that case, MadWorld is more or less the Wii’s GodHand, and it’s already outsold GodHand several times over despite having a much smaller userbase than the PS2 did later in its lifespan when GodHand hit – which says a lot and raises a point much of the media and most blogs have no interest whatsoever in focusing on, the overall slant constantly being that “Nintendo is bad and getting worse, the HD machines are amazing and their parent companies are on their way up.” There’s an inherent bias in gaming reporting dishonestly slanted toward appeasing a market minority that can’t accept the changes coming to the market. (Not unlike what we see with Fox News compared to most other news networks – though even in the real world, the mainstream media has a conservative bent as a result of their focus on ratings for sponsors and their corporate ownership. Something that’s only hurt the newsmedia in general.)

But yeah, to put it bluntly, the Wii sales are in no problematic state – especially compared to the competition – and the system, with its current overall momentum, in no way needs a price drop as they continue to add value through new big name games and peripherals to add to the experience versus the HD systems’ largely overestimating their value and sinking themselves on many levels years ago. As Monster Hunter 3 just reminded in Japan only weeks ago, all it takes is a third party making a high-demand big-budget Wii game and marketing it well and you’ll get a nice big sales boost out of it. And if they’ve any wisdom yet, the third parties should be focusing on getting the PS3 and 360 crowd – which has divided itself in an unhealthy and very unprofitable way, most of these self-proclaimed “hardcore gamers” marginalizing themselves and reducing their meaningful influence and input in the industry as consumers by picking overpriced unsustainable consoles out of a fixation on graphics and brandname – over to the Wii with more big budget, heavily-marketed “core” games.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 25, 2009

Wow, I ended up with a big painful wall in the middle of that last comment. Kudos to anyone who can get through it.

By Dai on Aug 25, 2009

Wow, Ponkotsu… Once again you’ve taken the words right out of my mouth. Exactly right and masterfully said. Very impressive. I fully agree.

On a similar note… One of the greatest sources of media bias comes from Game Informer- might I add. They flat-out ignore Wii versions of big name games, their Wii section is reduced to 2 reviews a month, big releases are often under-scored (or in some cases, reviewed several issues late), and their articles express open contempt for the Wii and its owners.

By Dai on Aug 25, 2009

Oh- and I never got the chance to reply to your response on the ‘Dead Space Exclusive’ article, Ponkotsu. ^^”

Its nice to see another writer taking a stand for the Wii. Far too often its kicked aside and treated like an outsider. I personally feel like it was a miracle for the gaming industry that Nintendo took the Wii route. With the hard times that the world entered at the start of this gen, I don’t see how the market would have survived with the cash-guzzling 360 & PS3 as the only options.

Oh, and if you did take a look at my work, I hope you liked what you saw. Ha…

By Ponkotsu on Aug 25, 2009

Thank you for your kind words.

And wow, I’ve heard about Game Informer’s bias before – with stories like their marking down Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door because they felt their audience would think it was “too childish” – but I had no idea they were so bad with the Wii. That’s just outright pathetic and beyond unprofessional.

Ah, I thought that might be the case, seeing as it’s been weeks since that news story anyway, haha.

Likewise, no kidding. There aren’t enough people standing up for the Wii when it’s got the market and reality on its side, so many have plunged themselves into willful delusion over Sony and Microsoft brand fanaticism and a whole new sad level of graphical obsession. Yeah, the way things have gone, we probably would have seen an effective crash this generation if not for the Wii and DS, with the HD consoles’ failings and the PSP ultimately being little more than a piracy machine. Very unhealthy straits for the industry, though a lot of third parties are definitely unwisely taking their sweet time in refocusing on the Wii, where there’s money to be made.

I did drop by your link there, actually, and I enjoyed reading the articles I looked through. If you haven’t yet, I hope you get a chance to take a look at the Sane Gaming series I wrote on my blog months ago. Otherwise, I occasionally tweet on gaming and I’m trying to provide some worthwhile commentary here as a regular now.