News

Nintendo Wii game console will retain its $249 price-tag for foreseeable future in the U.S. due to the fact that Nintendo has no problems with demand towards its latest game console, a company exec said on Thursday. In fact, there was hardly any need for the firm to cut the price not only because the demand outstrips supplies, but also because Nintendo earns money on Wii hardware, an unusual situation in the game console space.

“We’ll stay at $249 for the foreseeable future. We are still selling everything we can make,” George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing at Nintendo America, told Reuters news-agency in an interview.

Nintendo Wii has been selling in over 400 thousand quantities monthly in the U.S. in the past few months, according to figures from NPD group. Usually the demand towards game console skyrockets in November, December and January, hence, the main task for Nintendo is rather to secure more console hardware to keep up with demand than to cut the price to stimulate the demand. Even though the company promised to deliver as many consoles as possible, it warned that not everyone will be able to obtain Wii.

Nintendo Wii, the most successful new-generation game console, features IBM’s custom PowerPC architecture-based microprocessor named Broadway clocked at 729MHz and code-named Hollywood chip with built-in graphics core, DSP and I/O features from ATI that operates at 243MHz, earlier reports suggested. Nintendo Wii uses 91MB of memory in total: 23MB of “main” 1T-SRAM, 64MB of “external” 1T-SRAM and 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. Nintendo’s Wii does not feature a hard disk drive, instead, it boasts with 512MB of flash memory, but the console will also have a card reader, which will allow installing more memory.

Nintendo set the recommended retail price of ¥25 000 (about $204) in Japan, $249 in the U.S. and €249 ($342) in Europe.

Discussion

Comments currently: 3
Discussion started: 10/12/07 12:21:05 PM
Latest comment: 10/15/07 03:45:00 PM

[1-3]

1. 
It wouldn't make sense to cut price when you can't even manufacturer enough to meet demand.
[Posted by: RW  | Date: 10/12/07 12:21:05 PM]

2. 
Would you cut the price if you were in Nintendo shoes???

They'd get seud for creating widespread X-Mas anarchy seeing how well the system is doing at the moment.
[Posted by: huh  | Date: 10/13/07 09:21:02 AM]

3. 
Yeah I wish they would cut the price but that ain't gonna happen until you actually see them on store shelves. Lately It seems like everyone is selling them before they even get out of the stock room and onto the floor. I'll probably end up getting it at costco with there uber bundle of stuff that I don't need but is available ^_^. For now though I may just get a 360 Arcade and slap the 120GB Hard Drive on there.
[Posted by: Megamanx00  | Date: 10/15/07 03:45:00 PM]

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