Nintendo: Consumer Demand Proves Wii U Price Point is Right

Recently, many analysts have come to the conclusion that the Wii U’s price is to high. While the Wii U will have high sales during the holiday season, too high of a price point could cause stagnant sales during 2013. Nintendo's Scott Moffit explains that the Wii U price point is fine where it is, based on consumer demand.

[NYC_Gamer]

Wii-U price is right on point with 360 and PS3

[SilentNegotiator]

Except we need ACTUAL customer feedback from use to see if the attitude actually sticks past a few months into its launch.

[GameLord08]

Uh, no, you don't. Consumers can judge whether or not they feel a product is worth its value from its price in conjunction to its performance. It's a matter of opinion - and loads of people seem to share the same opinion on the Wii U's price-point, given its stupendously high pre-order figures.

[PopRocks359]

@SilentNegotiator

The thing is selling. A lot. Maybe it doesn't speak too much, but it certainly speaks something.

[SilentNegotiator]

Uh, yes, you do. Because general opinions are capable of changing with stimulus. Stimulus like, uhh....the average person actually playing the system within the first few months or seeing the releases after the back-catalog of ps3/360-present titles dries up.

[3-4-5]

It's sold out everywhere......That is all the customer feedback that is required.

[SilentNegotiator]

Are you really not getting this?

Consumers have NO experience with the system. We have NO way of knowing how the reactions will be and how lasting the positive response will last or to what extent.

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

guess this means ps4 & 720 will be forced to compete with wiiU's power then. :(

also this shows how unaware console gamers really are.
Instead of paying $50 more for the wiiU deluxe for an extra 24GB why not spend it on this?
http://www.amazon.com/Toshi...

Lol noobs.

[kesvalk]

you mean $50 for a game and a gamepad charger right?

no one in their right mind would pay $50 for just 24gb...

[Jinkies]

"ps4 & 720 will be forced to compete with wiiU's power then"

Why would they....if they both do a powerful console each then the Wii U is going to be in the minority, and where do you think developers will want to go then.

Do they want to stay producing games on all three consoles or would they just develop for the PS4 and 720 and produce much more powerful games which can do much more.

[Stroke666]

@junkies... if they try to hard to make a "powerful system imagine the price range it would cost the consumer. then developers wouldnt want to make a game for a system which no one will buy. nintendo is always the least expensive unit and look at all the shit they are catching for a 349 price mark. you really think sonysoft will release new systems just 50 bucks more than their current ones? so they will be competing to keep the power at a range where they can also compete economically.

[SactoGamer]

We here at News10 agree with Moffit that the initial price points for the Wii U and Wii U Deluxe are set appropriately.

[abzdine]

i'll not buy it before i see great games. So far it's almost only ports from old games plus Gamepad implementation.
let me see a 3D mario, Metroid, Starfox, Xtreme-G, Rogue Squadron and of course Zelda.

[Neonridr]

almost only ports? there are 31 games that are supposed to be launching with Wii U (including eShop games).

You cannot say that AC3 or Black Ops 2 are old ports as AC3 is less than 2 weeks old and Black Ops 2 will have been 5 days old by the launch. Ninja Gaiden 3 is a "reimagining" of what the game was originally supposed to be. But it includes a significant amount of new features and gameplay changes to negate it simply being a port.

Batman, ME3, Fifa 13, Madden 13, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, NBA2K13 and Darksiders 2 are the older ports. Although at least with ME3 and Darksiders 2 you are getting all the DLC included with the games, which is a nice feature if you haven't played either of them before.

7/31 is about one quarter of the releases.

almost only? hardly.

[abzdine]

What i meant is i'm not buying a machine to play the same games i can have on PS3.
I'm buying Wii U only for Nintendo games just like i did with older hardware from Big N!

[Neonridr]

but why not have the ability to play games you can play on your 360 or PS3, possibly with some improvements, plus the ability to play the awesome first party Nintendo games we all love. The best of both worlds, all in one machine.

[Moonman]

I think some naysayers forget that 360 and PS3 are around $300-$350 still.

[GameLord08]

I think some naysayers forget that the PS3 launched for $600.

[Neonridr]

even the base model PS3 with the 160GB hard drive is selling for $249.99 in Canada still - $50 less than the basic Wii U. Sure you get 160GB vs 8GB, but to gripe about an extra $50 when you're talking about a newer system with a touch screen controller is ridiculous.

[deafdani]

Not really. The PS3 also sold out on all preorders when it was about to release, and that was a $500-$600 machine.

Consumer demand is also ridiculously high whenever Apple launches any of their iDevices, and we all know Apple stuff is expensive as hell.

And I'm pretty sure that Sony's and Microsoft's next home consoles will also sell out on preorders, even if they end up costing $500 or more (which I doubt, but that's another story).

So, this doesn't prove the pricing is right. It just proves that people get excited about shiny new things, that's all. Especially after 6-7 solid years into this generation of consoles, it's the longest generation in the history of home consoles, so people of course want something new.

-----

That being said, I do think that the $300-$350 price point for Wii U is actually pretty good.

[Stroke666]

a system selling out launch could be simply chalked up to fanboys, but its not so much about it selling out, its about how many units are selling when they sell out for instance wii sold out but there are more wii u units available at launch than the wii had. the ps3 sold 600,000 units the first two days, nintendo has damn near sold the lot of its 1.5 million systems availabe at launch. and retailers report 250,000+ on waiting list. thats more than just new gadget fever. more like new affordable gadget fever lol correction just checked nintendo has 5.5 million units available for launch. scratch new gadget fever all together

[deafdani]

That's all interesting, could you please provide some links to back up those numbers? My memory is fuzzy, but I remember that back in 2006, Nintendo had about 4 million Wii units ready for launch, and all of them were sold out on day one between preorders and the buying frenzy of launch day.

Meanwhile, Sony was supposed to have 400,000 PS3 units ready for its launch in november, 2006, but there was a big number of PS3's that had some issue with the laser or something along those lines, so Sony had to recall those faulty units. That's all I remember from memory.

Now, the gaming market has broadened greatly, and as I said, this console generation has lasted way more than any other in gaming history, so the hype levels could understandably be even higher this time around. Add to that a bigger gaming market than 6 years ago, and it could be easy to see how the Wii U is sold out everywhere, despite it being available in higher numbers than the original Wii ever was.

My argument, for now, still stands.

[Roper316]

I personally have no interest in the Wii-U and won't be getting one, this will be my last gen as a multi-console owner altogether. I will be a single console owner & PC gamer from here on out, I am currently looking for the gaming rig I am gonna buy.

On Topic I don't feel the entry price point is high at all. I would consider the Wii-U to be kind of like a PS3.5 or a Xbox540 so to be in the same price range with the others is right on if you ask me.

[kesvalk]

i too play on a single console + PC, but the console i will get is the wii-u, cuz it's the first party games that i want...

even then, i will prolly wait 3 or 4 years before getting one, there are still a shitload of games i didn't finished in the wii and another shitload of games to play on PC...

[auragenz]

This article wouldn't even have been written if the price was right. The simple fact that many stories like this one exist just undermines their point.