Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

$280? Excellent.

I love how Darkmaster still categorizes it as the same even though it's now a $120-220 difference.

Seriously, if you work a part-time 30-hour week somewhere and then quit, you'll have enough.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

What the hell are you talking about? That was nothing more than a little side comment. What is up with all this defensive bullsh*t, man? Do you own shares in Nintendo Corp. or something?

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

No, and frankly I don't see how it should upset you if I make little side comments myself. It's all perspective, right.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

No sh*t the Wii will be profitable right out of the box. Your charging $250 for going on 5+ year old technology with a few little "bells and whistles" added. Hell, they are probably still making a profit off the Gamecube at $99.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

Thats nothing new, hasnt nintendo always made a profit off their systems? I actually dont care, they do what they do, because I know their big games wont become 5 million plus sellers like they did in the old days.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

I saw this tidbit on TheInquirer.net and just kinda laughed at it

So to cut costs they removed DVD Playback? How much would it have been if they left it in then?

ahh, the smell of bull**** in the morning

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

Well if the Xbox is any indication, $30-40 per console. Remember the ridiculously expensive DVD playback remote and sensor that "automatically" triggered DVD even though the console didn't technically need it? Yeah.

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

i think he's talking about cost, not price...but I could be wrong

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

It couldn't possibly cost much of anything to stick a DVD drive in... Hell, they could probably add in DVD capabilities, keep the price at $250, and still be making a profit on each console sold :p

But quite frankly it don't mattuh... Last generation it was somewhat of a selling point, but I'm sure every house has a DVD player by now... Hell, multiple DVD players... There are probably very, very few people out there who can honestly say they're dissapointed with the lack of DVD playback on the Wii (not to say that people would be happy... Just more along the lines of indifferent)...

But if the PS2 is any indication, $0 - $??, since the system launched for $300 (same price as Xbox a year later) and didn't require an extra device to activate it...
SPIN!!!

Re: Wii Launch and Price Revealed
 

Right, but if you'll think back, Sony also lost hundreds of thousands of dollars within the first couple months of releasing the PS2 in Japan. Sony was underselling the system and expecting to make the money back on game software; but since the PS2 was cheaper than most available DVD players in Japan at the time people were just buying the system and not buying games (a situation that became worse during the two day period that people found out they were region free "by accident" before they could pull them from retail shelves).

Obviously this wouldn't be echoed with the Wii, but it is an indication that it costs a bit. I mean, it's not the actual cost to make Wii's play DVD's, it's the cost of buying a license to be allowed to make millions of Wii's that play DVD's.

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.