Kroco
et pour ceux que ca interesse: l avis de matt d ign sur le lancement de la wii. et ce mec n est pas un amateur..







Thoughts: Wii Price, Release Date, More





I was jumping around this crazy thing we call the Inter-Web the other night and tripped over a reader post that asked the question, what does Matt think of the Wii's price and release date? Turns out, I speculated a lot about these very topics prior to the day they became official, but have said little on the subject since. I wasn't intentionally ignoring these issues -- it just never occurred to me to editorialize about them. And since it's probably a little late for a full-blown article, here we are on the blogs.



Welcome.



So I'll tell you exactly what I told both Perrin Kaplan and Reggie Fils-Aime when they asked me the same question, which is, I believe Wii is $50 too expensive and three weeks too late.



As a gamer, I want Wii to sell for $200 for a number of reasons. It has about one tenth the processing prowess and one fifth the RAM of, say Xbox 360, and it also lacks a true hard drive. It doesn't play DVDs. It doesn't play music CDs. Yes, you read that correctly and yes, it's true. In fact, in many ways, it could be called a turbo-charged GameCube. So why the $249 price point?



Well, there are certainly reasons for it. It's easy to shrug off Wii as the least powerful of the three consoles, but consider what Nintendo has done. Wii is roughly half the size of GameCube and it still packs twice the power. It has roughly double the processing prowess, approximately double the RAM, an additional 512MBs of useable flash memory, built in 802.11b/g wireless capabilities and a full docking station for GameCube controllers. The console is backward compatible, in fact, with every GCN title ever made. And I haven't even mentioned its Wii Channels system or, most importantly, the Wii controller, which could represent one of the biggest hardware innovations the industry has seen in years.



Still, Nintendo says it's going after the mainstream audience so I want to see it really do that from the start, and a $249 price point is not quite mainstream enough. This is especially true when you consider that many Wii games are designed to be enjoyed by multiple players and each separately sold Wii remote will cost buyers $39.99 plus another $19.99 for the nunchuk attachment. Add in a classic controller or two and all of a sudden we're well beyond the $300 price point – just so that mom and dad can play Wario Ware.



But here's the thing: Nintendo is a business, and selling Wii for $249 through the holiday is a smart business move. As much as I'd prefer it were cheaper, even I recognize that. The Big N will ship four million units through December and the hardcore crowd will devour the supply in no time. Nintendo's leaders have said that Wii will turn a profit from the start, which is something that neither Microsoft nor Sony could hope to do with their respective consoles. And when the competition finally does make an aggressive move to lower the price of their systems, Nintendo can drop the price of Wii to the magic sub-$200 point and go from there.



All of that noted, for $249 I was hoping that Nintendo would have at least included the classic controller with its Wii bundle, too. Wii Sports is certainly nice – and it will go a long way to introducing people to the new controller – but since we'll be downloading Virtual Console games from the start, too, the classic would've been a beauty of a pack-in.



As for the launch date, it's a mystery. I know what Nintendo was thinking, which is that it needn't worry about Sony because it has so few units to deliver. Only 400,000 PS3s will be available in the North American region when the system launches, which sure isn't a lot. Nintendo is so confident that Sony won't make much of an impact that it went ahead and moved Wii's release date to two days after PS3's, giving itself more time to hit the street date with a wealth of units.



But I still don't get the approach. Not entirely. The Big N clearly has a lot of units coming in. It could have launched earlier and with a steady supply.



Sony is not the only company to think about. Microsoft is out there, too, and there will be no shortage of Xbox 360s this holiday. Neither will there be any shortage of great Xbox 360 games. I think it would have been more advantageous for Nintendo to get out earlier in an attempt to make the public aware of Wii sooner rather than later.



Even with all of this being true, it's not as though I believe Nintendo has made some crippling mistake. In truth, I think Wii is going to perform phenomenally this holiday. I also believe that it has a solid chance of surprising everybody and gaining much more market share than anticipated, particularly in Japan. Unlike GameCube, I think Wii has a chance for the number one spot.



As a quick aside, I really love the Wii Channels. This is a great interface and I can tell you that I plan on it using it for news updates and weather forecasts. I'm not so sure about photos and Web browsing – I have iPhoto, Photoshop and Safari and I'm pretty sure all of them are more flexible – but I still believe it's a neat addition to the package. And, of course, the Virtual Console setup looks sweet indeed. So I'm really hoping that Nintendo makes the Wii Channels a topic in its marketing and advertising. Maybe something like this…



"Whatever your want. Whatever you need. Wii Channel it."
Jeremyray
C'est bien partit pour la Wii!

Mais maintenant il faut voir si ça durera à long terme ( ça je n'en doute pas mais on sait jamais ).
totti10
hum attendons de voir ce qui se passera vers la mi-2007 pour avoir une esquisse de réponse.

cet hiver on aura seulement des renseignements sur la base. mais comme plusieurs l'ont déjà dit, un bon départ n'est pas forcément gage de réussite pour beaucoup de raisons.



en fait aussi bizarre soit-il, les bonnes ventes du lancement ce n'est que du bonus.
shelder
Du tout bon. ^^
freezexecution
[quote="link4614"]En france ce n'est pas le même problème qu'aux états unis mais c'est toujours bien de réserver une console au cas ou... Je conseille ScoreGame qui (du moins dans ma région ) te permet de réserver la Wii pour 30€ sous forme d'accompte... C'est ce que j'ai fait et je suis sûr d'avoir ma Wii le 8 décembre à 8h pétante !!![/quote]

personnellement je l'ai reservée sur un site en ligne dont je tairais le nom car on le vois suffisament sur ce site ( :qblock: ) et je n'ai pas eu a payer d'accompte,mais je serai facturé au moment de la recevoir (au mieux le lendemain de sa sortie je pense)

j'avais fait pareil pour avoir la GPA SP, et ça c'est très bien passé.
Anonymous
[quote="Kroco"][quote="caselogic33"]Bref, pour moi, c'est une console de court terme.[/quote]

ben moi je vois pas pourquoi.. regarde la ds... [/quote]
bah oui... précisément.
RV
[quote="yoann007"][quote="Kroco"][quote="caselogic33"]Bref, pour moi, c'est une console de court terme.[/quote]

ben moi je vois pas pourquoi.. regarde la ds... [/quote]
bah oui... précisément.[/quote]


Niveau vente ou niveau technique? :-D
Anonymous
Sûrement au niveau technique, parce que les ventes ça donne ça (news fraîche d'hier sur PN - Charts Japon) :



Software



01 (N) (PS2) Dragon Ball Z Sparking Neo (Namco-Bandai)

02 (-) (NDS) Pokémon Diamond (Nintendo)

03 (-) (NDS) Pokémon Pearl (Nintendo)

04 (N) (PSP) Gundam Battle Royale (Namco-Bandai)

05 (=) (NDS) NEW Super Mario Bros (Nintendo)

06 (=) (NDS) Kanken (Rocket Co)

07 (-) (PS2) Hot Shots Tennis (SCE)

08 (=) (NDS) Final Fantasy III (Square Enix)

09 (-) (NDS) Brain Age 2 (Nintendo)

10 (=) (NDS) Animal Crossing (Nintendo





Hardware



01- Nintendo DS Lite - 124,137

02- PS2 - 28,264

03- PSP - 21,050

04- X360 - 2,101

05- Game Boy Advance SP - 1,532

06- Game Boy Micro - 1,273

07- GameCube - 488

08- Nintendo DS - 260

09- Game Boy Advance - 12

10- Xbox - 8



Avec des jeux comme [i]NSMB[/i] ou [i]AC[/i] qui commencent à avoir quleques mois maintenant ^^ Comme succès à court terme, elle se porte pas mal la p'tite DS :)
Anonymous
[quote="RV"][quote="yoann007"][quote="Kroco"][quote="caselogic33"]Bref, pour moi, c'est une console de court terme.[/quote]

ben moi je vois pas pourquoi.. regarde la ds... [/quote]
bah oui... précisément.[/quote]


Niveau vente ou niveau technique? :-D[/quote]
niveau jeux ?
RV
[quote="yoann007"][quote="RV"][quote="yoann007"][quote="Kroco"][quote="caselogic33"]Bref, pour moi, c'est une console de court terme.[/quote]

ben moi je vois pas pourquoi.. regarde la ds... [/quote]
bah oui... précisément.[/quote]


Niveau vente ou niveau technique? :-D[/quote]
niveau jeux ?[/quote]


Pas tort^^