[IGN]Rumors About Wii Price and Release Date + Portable Gamecube?

They're trying to avoid what happened last year with the 360. They were promising systems that they didn't have. This time around, they're trying to get accurate info from Sony/Nintendo regarding their shipments. And they can't get that until Sony and Nintendo are well into production for their systems.

I don't think they'll do a price drop until sometime next year (time depending on how demand is for the 360 after the holidays). The games coming out this Fall are enough to warrant a purchase of a 360, and supply of the PS3 and possibly the Wii will be limited anyway. Plus, MS may need another 6 months or so to keep from losing even more money on the 360. The guys at the top seem to be demanding that the 360 turns in a profit this time around (by around 2007-2008 IIRC), and putting in a price cut when it isn't necessary won't help them reach that goal (especially since they're so far behind as it is). As UTweezer pointed out, they'll probably stick to bundles for the immediate future, which is a good way to increase demand while not costing MS that much more money.

Some places are selling them below price. Overstock.com will occasionally sell them for ~$350 or even ~$300 at times.

But the PS2 is 43% less the price of the Wii and the GC is 57% less the price of the Wii (and the PS2 will probably reach the GC % somewhat soon).

If the Wii had better specs, I'd compare it to the 360 and PS3 (and it would most likely have the same % numbers it has now), but with these specs, the GC and PS2 are basically part of the same market.

The fact that Nintendo is trying to get people into games ($200+ is too much for them) and that they're using 2001 tech made me think that it could go for less than $200 (not $199 either). The GC came out in 2001, was more powerful than the PS2 (which was still $299 at the time IIRC), was comparable to the Xbox (also at $299), and it only cost $200 (and $150 shortly after that I think). And Nintendo being Nintendo, they made a profit pretty much the whole time (think it had a slight loss on the first price drop, but not at launch IIRC).

They avoided the only thing that would really increase the price, so therefore, I don't see why it should launch at a price higher than the GC (or even the N64, which was even better tech during its time although it didn't have a CD-drive). That's from a gamer/consumer POV though; I obviously know why they'd do it from a business standpoint, especially with the DS (though it's overpriced as well, but not as bad).

I understand the move from a business standpoint (same way I understand the price tags for the 360 and the PS3). I'm going from a consumer/gamer POV, in which case, I don't care how smart the move is from a business perspective. Then again, I'm disappointed with the price tags of every system, so maybe I'm just too difficult to please.

The PS2 (especially with an Eyetoy) and GC are more similar to the Wii than the PS3 and 360. And they're both much cheaper than the Wii (and both are profitable too).

And actually, as I mentioned earlier, MS might be able to get the 360 Core to a cheaper price than the Wii pretty soon (say $200 to $230...or even $200 to $250 for those expecting that price tag for the Wii). Granted you would have to buy a memory card for the 360, but there is NO way that should be happening (not to mention the premium would only be ~$70 more).

RE4 looks good, but I'll be very disappointed if the average PS3/360 doesn't make it look like a last-gen game (which it is). There were some nice looking PS1/N64 games, but the PS2/DC/GC/XBX were good at pointing out the flaws in those games, especially late in the game (GOW, Halo 2, FFXII, etc.). I'm guessing the PS3 and 360 will do (and have done) the same (although perhaps to a lesser degree). Besides, so far a lot Wii games look worse than RE4, which doesn't help.



I would just prefer it if the Wii (as it stands now) cost less, or if Nintendo upped the specs some and kept it around the same price (and still was profitable if they really wanted it to be). It will be a lot of fun either way, but I just would like to be getting a little more for my dollar I guess.

 

I don't think we're anywhere near that point where we can't tell a difference in graphics. FF7:AC looks WAY WAY WAY better than any game I've ever played, and that's also on a SDTV. The point where increasing specs won't really make a difference will probably happen eventually, but not anytime soon.

Even if the graphics were similar, you'd still get better physics, better animation, better lighting, better AI, bigger worlds, and more of all that happening at once (think of Dead Rising, which probably has slightly better graphics than RE4 at the very least, but like 100+ zombies on screen or something like that).

 

A $200 (or $230) Wii that can't do any of that versus a $300 360 that can isn't very cool IMO. Especially if the 360 gets a price cut to $200 as well.

I realize that not every game requires dozens of characters; that was just an example of a game that wouldn't be possible on the Wii but had graphics similar to RE4 (bit of a stretch though). Take the polygons necessary for creating those characters and add them to the 5 or so characters on screen and you'll get something that looks MUCH better than say RE4. Then add all the other stuff I mentioned earlier.

BTW, I'm not exactly sure about the difference in power between the PS2 and Wii, but even if the Wii was 4x the power, I'm not sure how noticeable it would be. Maybe like the DC to Xbox or something like that.

edit: Of course, the controller makes a difference, but I'm talking about the technical capabilities of the systems in case anyone wonders.

 

The CPU and GPU are based on the tech used in the GC, so it is 2001 tech IMO. Kind of like RSX is based on the G70/G71 (unless things changed), which is like 2005 tech (even though it is more powerful than the average G70 GPU, especially when paired with Cell, and will be released in late 2006).

If nothing else, the specs almost match up to the Xbox in some regards, which also launched in 2001. Take out the HDD in the Xbox, and maybe add $50-$100 to the price to match the Wii specs completly (or make the Xbox CPU/GPU as efficient as the GC), and the Xbox would be the Wii of 2001 (without the controller and Nintendo's games of course). Of course, the GC could have done that too, but Nintendo wouldn't have taken a loss on the HW nor would they have charged that much I'm assuming.

I wouldn't knock the specs if the price matched them (even if Nintendo still made a profit off them). If it was around say $150, there wouldn't be much reason to knock it (specs would suck, but it would be considerably cheaper than the 360 and barely more expensive than the PS2/GC). If they're going to charge $230 for it, I'd want a little bit better specs or a lot of stuff bundled with the system. In fact, if they include a game (Wii Sports or something), 2-3 controllers, and maybe something else (free VC downloads), I probably won't really mind the price much. That might be close to $50-$70 of stuff added in to the system, which is about how much less I'd prefer the system to cost given the specs.

Make it so Nintendo.

 

By based on, I mean that it uses roughly the same architecture. For example, if you follow the PC world, you have something like the AMD X2 dual-core processors or the Nvidia Geforce 7800/7900 series. Some of the processors/graphics cards are more powerful/expensive than the others (AMD X2 4200 vs X2 3800, GF 7900 GTX OC'ed vs GF 7800 GT at stock speeds), but they're all based on the same tech (just tweaked for varying performance and cost). From the rumors, the Wii is supposed to be using a CPU and GPU which are either modified from the original GC design, or heavily based on the same design. Unless Nintendo is doing GC emulation by software (which would be near impossible to do at these specs on a completely different architecture I imagine) or is including GC hardware (which isn't used in Wii games), that would probably explain why you could play GC games on the Wii. The Wii is basically a Gamecube that has been tweaked to get a little more performance ( a Gamecube Turbo if you will).

The RSX is based on 2005 tech, at least as far as I know. Sony (or Nvidia) still hasn't given full details on the RSX, so it might be slightly different than the tech that came out in 2005, but I doubt that. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if RSX is almost exactly like my graphics card (7900 GT @ 550 MHz), just modified to work in a console. Xenos (the 360 GPU) is roughly 2004-2005 tech...although in a way, it is also 2006 tech, but that's a whole other subject.

As for the PS3 as a whole, I'd say it is more or less 2006 tech (at least as far as getting that tech in a mass-market device, which Cell, the XDR RAM, and Blu-ray have yet to do before 2006).

 

The only thing that the PC world is really ahead in is in GPU tech (although that is kind of a big part of specs). The GPUs in the consoles will be a little behind the top-of-the-line graphics cards due to the nature of the system. For graphics cards, extremely low yields are OK since only a couple thousand cards will be sold (all at really high prices). For a console, you'll need millions of them and you'll need to keep it relatively cheap. Things like the Cell processor, the RAM setups in the consoles, and a couple of other design choices (connection between Cell and RSX or the EDRAM in the 360) allow for consoles to be more powerful than most, if not all, PCs though .

I can't remember exactly what I said in the past, although I probably feel the same way. If I said that the specs in the consoles would be more powerful, that is probably true, although you might be able to get close to it if you spend several grand (like $2500+).

Now if I said that PS3/360 games would look better than PC games, that should be true (outside of PC devs who have problems making console games). The closed-box nature of consoles gives it an advantage over the open-box nature (PC developers can't assume that their customers will have 2005 -2006 tech in their PCs, so they'll develop with 2003-ish tech in mind).

The delays and the desire to go with WW launches hasn't helped my argument though.