Drink In Cheap Wii! Sub-£100 Gathers Pace

Double post... I know...

I don't think Ninty is going to "fail" this time around. Some of you think the GCN was a failure, I'm not so inclined to that ideal. I (unfortunately) work at mcdonalds, and starting in September happy meals will come with a nintendo character. theres like 6 of em, and they will be running this for a couple of months... conveniant how that happens to be leading up to the launch of the Wii...

good stuff indeed, nintendo has got the obese people hooked now too...

By itself, that means nothing, but it does show Ninty is taking the game seriously again. GCN got zip, zilch, nada, nougatbollen PR, marketing, advertising, image building...

And about Ireland... well, the Lite costs 150 € here in Belgium too, while in the states it costs 130 $. But GCN was 199 € and 199 $. (What currency do the Irish use nowadays anyway, € too?)

Yeah, we use € too. What's the deal with the DS Lite? It's €150 here, or €160 with Metroid. I think that's so silly, because it proves to me that the console should really be €130 and the game should be €30. I feel like we're being forced to buy a game.

Good to know that they've got some decent marketing up their sleeve.
I agree that Nintendo should do better this time around. If the Wii has anything like the success of the DS they'll do great. Can't wait. The DS has such a huge range of great games. I haven't bought this many games for a console in years. Huzzah!

Someone on SPOnG previously corrected me on this; the GC chip was developed by ArtX rather than ATi and ATi happened to buy ArtX just before the release (ArtX worked on the N64 graphics too). So those water effects aren't ATi.

However, for Wii it's pointless for ATi to develop several chips doing the same things. They'll borrow from previous or present or future chips to make a customised processor which may or may not be similar or mainly based on an existing chip. Only ATi and Nintendo know the true nature of the chip.

I believe GCs were sold at a profit and then a mariginal loss when the price was lowered for the final time. I have no idea if they're selling at a loss or profit now. Nintendo don't seem to want to loose money on hardware.

For my input, the lower the price the quicker people will adopt Wii, however it will leave Nintendo less room for movement in the future and to increase sales in the future. The problem is people expect prices to drop - Nintendo need to leave room for that to happen.

I suspect a £130 to £150 starting price, dropping to £100 later. They may launch at a higher price than this, but I think it'll quickly drop to £130/150.

I thought you knew bugger-all about GPUs, but it's nice to have confirmation.

Listen carefully. Silicon Graphics created the N64s GPU. The team that created the N64s GPU broke off to form a new company: ArtX. ArtX created GC's GPU. After the GPU design was complete but before GC shipped, Ati bought ArtX and just decided to slap their sticker on the casing. The ArtX team now within Ati went on to create the R300, the chip that put Ati ahead of nVidia.

Now, the R300 and Flipper are 2 COMPLETELY different chips, they share little in common. And rightly so, one's intended for a PC and one's intended for a closed system. Furthermore, water effects look the same on any chip that can do water effects, so your comment about GCs having "Ati stamped all over them" is complete and utter b******s.

As for R520, no doubt it'll have something in common with Hollywood, but no more than what Flipper has in common with it. You're not going to find Pixel ShadersTM (yes, it is a trade mark) inside of Hollywood, you're not going to find embedded 1T-SRAM inside R520. Wii especially won't have anything remotely as powerful as an R520 either, so you might aswell pretend you never even heard the name.

Now you're being implicit, not explicit!

Okay, so you know more about the history of the GC hardware than I do, but as that chap said in the last post, it is likely that ATI will put new routines into the Wii's GPU (i.e. the type that might have made it into the R520) which is not surprising considering that the Wi hardware was not finalised at E3. It doesn't make sense for them to have two radically different GPU sets/standards in their own company.

Also, since ATI bought out Artx and slapped their logo on the GC.... that's even MORE of an ATI stamp on those water effects! I imagine that whatever hardware routines Artx had conjoured up for the GC made good for ATI's next cards. Or maybe not. I'd heard before that there was no Flipper technology implemented in ATI cards. But I still think there were algorithms developed by Artx and developed further by ATI. It makes sense. ATI didn't splash 400 Mill on a company that earned 10 mill in one year just to get to their customers! (Let's not argue - I'm aware of the many reasons they did it, but I'm sure one of them was to get at their technology).

Look, I don't know why you're being so acrimonious about all this. I was trying to make a simple point that the Wii is going to have nice graphics, I mean, very nice, and they are very nice, just look at Mario Galaxy. But certainly some development has gone into this chip. It WILL use new techniques developed by ATI, even if it's new versions of old algorithms. There was some amount of time and some amount of money that went into its development, and Nintendo will feel obliged to make a decent amount of profit because whatever GPU is in there is going to make us all go "Oooooh". And that was my main point - the price. If you make anything that makers somebody go "Ooooooh", then you can charge what you want.

Yes nintendo did not state that its console is next generation: just predictable improvements of past machines. It said it was BRAND NEW GENERATION (ok they didn't say brand) DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY. You are seriously underestimating the Wii and its key selling point... the controller.
No its not just a gimmick, the Wii Remote (or "Wii-mote"), is used as a handheld pointing device and can detect motion and rotation in three dimensions. The controller also contains a speaker and a rumbling device to provide sensory feedback.

In your gay little country of Ireland the psp might be beating the DS but worldwide the DS is thrashing it and in Japan apsolutely destroying it "Nintendo DS in Japan outsells all of our competitors by a factor of five to one. We are so far in advance of our handheld competitors that they're not even on the map. That's all based on a market expansion strategy."

there are millions of Eminem clones that are "all about Madden" or think "EA is da bomb". The money of retards has made Sony what it is today and it seems some of that support may be leaving

The general public likes s**t. Total garbage, putrid, mountanous piles of steaming turd. They love it. Whether it be movies, games, TV, radio, whatever. EA gives the people what they want.

The PSP, though functionally made for hardcore gamers, is instead marketed to the casual gamer. The gamer who likes s**tty sports, racing, and shooter games. That's what makes money, not the people who actually consider gaming a hobby.

You've got some real balls, f**k-face. How about you internet nerds start talking online the way you'd talk to my god damn face. Half you assholes can't argue for s**t and throw methods of discussion out the window because one or two people get their facts slightly blurred.

Hey, cock-sucker, I said the DS got an initial trouncing by the PSP. DS sales have no excelled past the DS here. But that's okay, because you told us all about the speaker in the controller. S**t, I was confused there for a second. Why that puts the whole manufacturing cost / retail price thing into perspective.

How old are you? If you're 12, sorry for coming down so hard on you. If you're any older, learn some manners when discussing topics on the internet.

Sorry to everyone for the outburst of explicitives.

I don't think you needed to take that so hard, but i don't want to get involved.

I'm from a small happy country too :)

I don't want to seem like I'm abusing my moderator status here, but what the heck.

Ireland has 7.4 times the landmass of, say, Cyprus, just an example, mind you.

Ireland has 5.1 times the population of, say, Cyprus, another random example there.

Ireland also has 7.7 times the GDP of, lets take a random example, say, Cyprus. That's north and south combined.

Not such a little country after all, is it?


Well, the PSP is not quite being thrashed by the DS. We had a lovely little chat about this in the "Sony Coy on PSP Pricing Shuffle" thread. The only market where the DS is significantly outselling the PSP in either hardware or software is Japan.

Software wise in the UK, the DS still has not sold as many games as the PSP, despite being out for 24 more weeks. The DS has started to out sell the PSP in the last eight weeks, since the launch of the DS Lite. However average weekly software sales of the PSP are twice those of the DS.

Hardware wise, in the US, the DS and PSP are within 10% of each other, i.e. the DS has sold 11 units to every 10 of the PSP.

But then, we were supposed to be talking about the price of the Wii.

Its a gimmick. SHOW ME THE SOFTWARE and I'll consider upgrading it. Its an innovation sure, but one whose impact on the market is as of yet unproven, and which has a greater relative downside if it fails to resonate with users than its upside as a success, at least as I see it.

Shut your gob, you ignorant little s**t licker. Talk all the smack you want about England, you leave Ireland the hell alone. so what, Japan is an abberation, even if it does punch well above its weight, its still an abberation.

how original..."the general public is stupid"...like thats not the mantra of a million other below-average, yet strangely would-be elitists before you...honestly get some new material.

unlike you, who seems to favor sticking his foot in his mouth for his leisure activities. really, just your screenname shows your lack of grasp of the situation. Nintendo (or MS, for that matter) doesn't have to "win". And the Wii doesn't stand a chance anyway ...sorry if thats a bitter truth for some... it'll do very well, I'm sure, but "win"? No, sorry, not gonna happen. Oh wait, if blu-ray is proven to cause alzheimers in children, and 360s start leaking dioxin...no, still not gonna happen...

Chill out dude my country is little and gay too. It's nothing personal. And I never said that the controller justifies a high price though that freemotion technology don't come for free . I hope not all Irish people are touchy like you.

You really don't know anything about Ireland (or the Irish, or anything else, apparently) do you?

'Nintendo (or MS, for that matter) doesn't have to "win". And the Wii doesn't stand a chance anyway ...sorry if thats a bitter truth for some'

I'm saving this on microsoft word. You better still be here in 2 years.

PS: Is this an Irish website? Its funny how you constantly(from my experience) make fun of other races but then when someone says (gay ireland) you get so offended. I said Ireland was gay because you buy games consoles because of fads. If you said (gay Cyprus((for a reason)) to a greek person) They wouldn't start bitching like pussies(I'm not saying Irish people do). Opos esas tous pouties pou klete sinehia. And see what a hypocrit you are. You say its alright to dis England but not Ireland.