Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

only having tons of PS2s in Japanese households payed off like a mother****** after a few years...

and even then, your point holds no ground because DVD tech was a million times more expensive in the late 90's than it is now.

i dont think its a big deal at all whether or not the Nintendo Wii has DVD playback...going with what has been said, pretty much everyone has a DVD player by now. thing is, i like having more devices with DVD playback so that I dont have to have a DVD player hooked up to whatever TV the game system is hooked up to. that helped quite a bit living in residence last year...used my PS2 as a DVD player.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

There are two costs associated with creating a machine that plays DVD movies. The first is the actual cost of the technology to read DVD's and display them. The second is the licensing permissions to create a machine that's allowed to play DVD movies. There's a patent on it, you have to pay your royalties.

Referring to my post holding no ground, if you had read my post in its entirety I stated that "obviously [the PS2 phenominon] wouldn't be echoed with the Wii." Back in the early 90's the actual technology was expensive, but since the Xbox and PS2 were already using the technology (and the fact that DVD players were still relatively rare) it made sense for them to also invest in the semi-costly license to be allowed to run DVD movies. Now that DVD technology is cheap, and the actual costs involved are with the rights to make the machine and not the machine itself; coupled with the fact that most people already have DVD players, Nintendo just decided to leave it out for now. I have no doubt that Nintendo could later offer a firmware update over their online service that you purchase for DVD playback.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

True that. This is dissapointing news to me. It would have been nice to know that I could just stick a movie into that sleek machine if I ever needed to. I would have even been willing to buy a $40 dongle (eventually) to get DVD playback. But oh well, it won't keep me from buying mii Wii.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

I hope they team up with Panasonic again and make a cool Wii just like the Gamecube Q.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

So how else are you going to justify that price. I heard that straight from the horse's mouth and that's literally what all of the EB employees were told: if you want DVD, then you're going to pay for this item to cover the cost of DVD licencing. And hell, you couldn't compare the cost of a crappy PS2 model to an Xbox back in the day, so cost of the machine is irrelevant. Xbox would've cost at LEAST $20-30 more if it included DVD playback and that is a fact.

But damn, it just makes sense, so why are you making a snide comment like that? Even if I was $10 over or whatever, I still pointed out a fact.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

*cough*I believe I told BAB that the price would 249.99 *cough*

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

I believe Stu pointed out (by clarifying what Jonbos quote said) that DVD playback would raise production cost, but not necessarily raise price.

Yes XBox did cost at least $30 more, because that remote cost at least $30 (as its current price is $29.99). However, if the Xbox did play DVDs without the remote, I would not suspect that the XBox would have raised its price over the PS2's release price. I think the remote was included to raise the overall price while still keeping the console competitively priced. .

Nintendo had a target price, and they weren't going to miss it. They didn't remove DVD to avoid raising the price of the machine; they did it to change the difference between price and cost in their benefit. I believe the order of worst idea to best idea is as follows:

Plays DVDs: $300 -> Plays DVDs: $250 -> Doesn't play DVDs: $250

I think they either ruled out option number one first or didn't even consider it.

... :lolb: You said crappy PS2 model.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

what the hell are you talking about?


i was talking about cost vs. price...were you saying that DVD playback cost Microsoft $40 per system to play DVD movies? I thought you were referring to the price of the DVD remote that consumers needed to buy in order to play DVD movies.

If I'm wrong, my mistake...



...but get a ****ing grip.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

No. I won't get a grip until you understand what I'm talking about. It didn't cost microsoft anything. If the consumer wanted DVD playback, they payed for it. The remote TRIGGERED DVD playback, and once microsoft got the money from you, most, if not all of it went straight to DVD licencing. That is the logic I'm presenting.

Microsoft set up a contract with the DVD licencees that they wouldn't pay a damn dime because the Xbox wouldn't ACTUALLY play DVDs until you bought the remote. And when you did, all that money went to the DVD licencing. Am I making sense yet. DVD playback cost them nothing. It cost the consumer. That is price. Of course the actually cost of the remote was $5, but the rest of the $30-40 went elsewhere. Look now, 360 universal remotes are not even more than $15, because microsoft pays fees for licencing on every 360 model now.

And so, I posited that DVD playback would PROBABLY cost Nintendo $30-40 per console for licencing, except it's probably cheaper nowadays. My point is, I'm concluding it COSTS Nintendo $20-$40 because of the Xbox Remote fiasco, and that is a bit of a hefty number, so I can see why they would skip on it to make some profit.