Nintendo intends to ship 1 million Wiis at launch to try to satiate America’s desire to play with the next new generation of games, as Nintendo has dubbed their console.
November 19 may be later than what most speculation had been saying. The $250 price is as expensive a price as Nintendo had quoted since they ever explained the price in any way, that time being E3 2006, which occurred in May. It only comes with one control ($39.99) and analog stick ($19.99) with no virtual console attachment ($19.99) (grand total of ~$80 for a set, not including gun and others that may arrive), but at least the US gets a game in the package, which Nintendo has not done at launch since the initial release of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
This was all explained early this morning at a press conference held in New York City. Nintendo of Japan had their conference at midnight CST. The major difference between the US release and Japan’s own release is that American’s Wii will be shipped with Wii Sports, a compilation of 5 simple games to help draw a new crowd to console gaming. Those games being golf, baseball, tennis, bowling and boxing (the last two of which were announced new today).
In related news, Sony isn’t the only one to delay something promised at launch (poor Europe) because Nintendo regretfully admitted today that Retro Studios will delay the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption until 2007. Not to say there aren’t plenty of other releases for the Wii at launch to satisfy even the core Nintendo gamers.
Check out more on Nintendo’s newly launched Web site.
According to several sources, vast quantities of PLAYSTATION3s have been delayed from launch. Sony at E3 2006 originally set the numbers at 6 million units worldwide by the end of the fiscal year (March 2007). The numbers have been cut to 500,000 “worldwide”, where worldwide specifically means 400,000 for the US, and a mere 100,000 in Japan.
You may be asking, “Hey, what about the people in Europe? Aren’t they part of the world too?” European launch has been delayed until Spring 2007 due to the apparent lack of BluRay lasers on the market.
While this may not be Wii-specific news, it shows Sony seems to be stumbling to gather parts for their units made to be made, and hence, sold. All this time, Nintendo, who decided to go with cheaper, easier to manufacture parts for their Wii, should have no problem meeting the demands of the hungry consumer..