The good news: After six years on the market, Wii now has a price of under $100. Bad news: in Canada.
Well: I guess it’s not bad news if you’re Canadian. Wii Mini, announced today by the gamemaker’s northern subsidiary, sports a radically different form factor and color scheme than the original motion-controlled console. It’s a dual-tone matte finish of textured red and black, something that looks like it came from the toy aisle rather than the electronics department. It’s the first version of Wii to not have that cool slot-loading automatic drive; instead, the top pops up and you put the disc on the spindle manually.
Wii, with its innovative motion controls, was a colossal success for Nintendo. Since its launch in 2006, it has sold over 95 million units worldwide, eclipsing sales of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Wii’s massive popularity meant that Nintendo could maintain its launch price of $250 through September 2009. A successor machine, Wii U, which keeps Wii’s motion controllers and adds GamePad, a controller with a built-in touchscreen, launched this month.
Nintendo launched a slight revision of the Wii hardware in 2011 that eliminated the now barely used backward compatibility with the GameCube console. Wii Mini goes a step farther and removes the internet connectivity. So now it’s strictly for playing Wii game discs, of which Nintendo of Canada says 1,300 are available.
So the big question on everyone’s lips is, of course: Why Canada? Is Nintendo unsure of whether consumers will want Wii Mini, and therefore test-marketing it in Canada first?
I think it’s the wrong question. The right question is: Why not the United States?
Two potential reasons spring to mind. Perhaps Wii, bundled with games at $130-150, is just doing too well in the U.S. for Nintendo of America to want to introduce a new model right now. CNET reported on Monday that Nintendo had sold 300,000 Wii systems and 400,000 Wii U last week. Many of those were at discounted rates, some cheaper than the Wii Mini. Perhaps Nintendo of America has every intention of releasing Wii Mini here, but surmised that the old Wii had one more Christmas left in it at prices as high as $150. (It has not yet responded to Wired’s request for comment.)
Or maybe for America, the removal of the Internet functionality was a step too far?
We know two things for sure: One, as of last year 25 percent of Netflix subscribers used Wii to access the streaming video service. Two, Netflix isn’t nearly as big a deal in Canada: The Globe and Mail reported in October that growth has “plateaued,” it doesn’t have nearly as much content as the U.S. version does, and extra charges for bandwidth in Canada can make streaming video a very expensive proposition.
“The problem in Canada is… they have almost third-world access to the internet,” said Netflix’s chief content officer in September, as reported by GigaOm.
So perhaps it’s the case that Nintendo of Canada doesn’t mind nearly as much that Wii Mini has no connectivity.
By removing GameCube compatibility, removing all the networking hardware and replacing the cool slot-loading disc drive with an uncool but presumably much cheaper hinged-door, Nintendo has surely lowered the Wii’s cost of goods to rock bottom with the Mini. With well over 1000 games (and, you know, ten or eleven fantastic ones), a super-cheap Wii could continue to live on and on as a bargain console. With Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 still hovering around $250, it’s doubtful that Microsoft or Sony would ever bother creating models this inexpensive, so Mini could be the only option for families looking for dirt-cheap TV gaming.
In Canada.
Nintendo to Launch $99 'Wii Mini,' But Only in Canada. Why?
This article
Nintendo to Launch $99 'Wii Mini,' But Only in Canada. Why?
can be opened in url
http://newsbehind.blogspot.com/2012/11/nintendo-to-launch-99-mini-but-only-in.html
Nintendo to Launch $99 'Wii Mini,' But Only in Canada. Why?
