11/19/06 – $249.99
Those are the key numbers Nintendo announced today for the North American release of the upcoming Wii. On first glimpse the $250 price tag is a bit of a disapointment, until you realize that Nintendo has decided to include “Wii Sports” as the first system pack in game since the days of the SNES. I suppose that justifies the extra $50 and its a smart move by Nintendo as Wii Sports will do a fantastic job of showing just what the system is all about and the world at large, who may not normally be inclined to purchase a game with “Sports” in the title, won’t have to miss out on this truly unique gem. Sure its no Mario or Zelda but lets take what we can get.The Big N also revealed a few other juicy details at todays worldwide press conferences.
- 4,000,000 systems will be delivered worldwide by years end with the majority of those supposibly coming to the US. Thats more then double the ammount of systems Sony is planning on shipping this year.
- 25 games will be available at launch including the new Zelda, Madden, Excite Truck, Trauma Center, Need for Speed and more.
- First party games will retail for under $50, $10 bucks cheaper then PS3 or XBOX 360 games.
- Virtual Console games will retail for roughly $5 for NES games, $8 for SNES games and $10 for N64 games. Expect around 10 new games a month.
- Games and other items will actually be purchased via Wii points, a concept similar to Microsoft’s model. You can get 2000 Wii points for $20.
- Using the “Mii” channel you will be able to create a virtual avatar of yourself that will be saved to your Wii-mote. This allows you to take your character with you and the capability is there for your virtual self to automatically be displayed in games you play.
- There will be other Wii channels, a photo channel for picture viewing, a news channel, a weather channel (which are both updated non stop through WiiConnect 24) and will also include a messaging service.
- There will also be an internet channel which will allow you to surf the web using Nintendo’s version of the Opera browser. There is speculated to be some sort of cost with this but that was not announced.
- All channels will come up immediately, no load times. The idea is to embrace the casual gamers by not making them lose interest with loading screens.
Very interesting news out of the Nintendo camp. I for one am quite excited but then again as a Video Game fan boy I’m always excited for new system launches. That said my money won’t be going to the big bad PS3 this fall. It just feels a heck of a lot like the PSP launch. A lot of hype and a lot of pretty eye candy trying to cover a whole lot of concerns. That’s beside the fact that it will cost an arm and a leg. I’m sure I’ll get one eventually but come November, I’ll be swinging my arms with the Wii.
