The New York Times (NYT) is reporting a number of Wii launch details ahead of Nintendo’s planned announcement tomorrow night.
Here are all the wonderful details in a nice and easy to digest list:
– The Wii will cost $250. Offical price probably $249.99
– Will launch in both North & South America on Saturday, November 19th. Two days after the PS3.
– Games will cost $50; $10 less than new PS3 and Xbox 360 games.
– The Wii console will SHIP with a free game, that game being Wii Sports.
– Wii Sports features tennis, baseball, golf and previously unannounced bowling and boxing games.
– According to the NYT, Wii launch numbers will be substantially higher than the PS3’s 400,000.
– Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, ExciteTruck, and 8 Ubisoft games will hit before the end of the year.
– Super Mario Galaxy will not arrive until 2007.
– The Wii will have “web-surfing capabilities, like that of a home computer” according to the NYT, and will include channels for viewing photos, as well as news and weather.
– Wii.com has relaunched and the Japanese section shows the different channels described above.
– Nintendo later today will also announce that 25-30 games will be published this year, as well as about 30 classic games available on the Virtual Console download system, costing about $5-10 each.”
– Nintendo plans to ship 4 million of the Wii consoles worldwide this year.
– In Japan the Wii remote will cost 3800 yen or about $40; the nunchuck 1800 yen or about $20 and the classic controller 1800 yen or about $20.
– Famitsu reports the Virtual Console will see 30 Nintendo games AND 30 PC Engine/Megadrive (Turbo-Grafx/Genesis) games before end of year (in Japan). Ten new Virtual Console games every month after that!
– Pay for the Virtual Console game downloads by credit card of Wii points card.
Nintendo of Japan announced the expected 25,000 Yen price (US$212.50 is purely a currency difference), and there the Wii will hit store shelves on Monday, December 2nd. Here are the pack-in details for Japan: The Wii will come with a Wii-mote (nunchuck and strap attachment), AC adaptor, stand for console, A/V cable, sensor bar, stand for sensor bar and two AA batteries. There will be 16 games available at launch, including The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
The Seatlle Post-Intelligencer also reports: “Our goal is to bring gaming back to the masses,” Reggie Fils-Aime, president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America, said in a telephone interview. “You see that in our pricing, you see that in the number of units we plan to make available this year and you see that in how we are positioning the Wii to appeal to every member of the household, including but not limited to the hard-core gamer.”
So it turns out our May Wii price estimate wasn’t far off, considering the unexpected Wii Sports bundling. More details will come straight from Nintendo tomorrow evening in New York City. Stay tuned!