Main > Consoles
Nintendo Wii
AtomSmasher:
--- Quote from: Zero_Hour on November 09, 2006, 11:11:43 am ---I'm getting one too, and I'm no fanboy - I had a used NES in the late 80's and that has been my only Nintendo purchase thus far.
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Hehe, same here, the NES was my last console from nintendo (excluding handhelds)
AlanS17:
--- Quote from: AtomSmasher on November 09, 2006, 12:52:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero_Hour on November 09, 2006, 11:11:43 am ---I'm getting one too, and I'm no fanboy - I had a used NES in the late 80's and that has been my only Nintendo purchase thus far.
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Hehe, same here, the NES was my last console from nintendo (excluding handhelds)
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My last Nintendo console was the SNES. I moved over to Playstation after that. The Wii is gonna be my chance to not only jump back on the Nintendo bandwagon, but to also play catch-up because of the virtual console.
Hoopz:
--- Quote from: Zero_Hour on November 09, 2006, 11:11:43 am ---
--- Quote from: shmokes on November 09, 2006, 01:07:36 am ---
And, for what it's worth, the Atari 2600 and Intellivision were not aimed at mainstream consumers. They were aimed at a small niche of gamers and they carried high price tags that mainstream consumers wouldn't even look at.
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You are so wrong here it's funny. Ataris were bought largely by parents for their children. The only videogames that really predated them were pong variants and the woefully undersold Odyssey. There were no nice gamers in that era. The price was a factor of new technology entering the mainstream market. Kind of like VCRs in the same era. The reason that videogames are still viewed as 'kids stuff' by a signifigant portion of America, is because for them, that's what they were.
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You are close, but not quite right. Atari was bought by parents who didn't know better. The Intellivisions were bought by discerning parents who wanted the best for their kids. >:D
Seriously, your time frame is right though. I remember buying a Pong game back in 78 or so. When Atari and then Intellivision came out, it created quite a buzz. But there really wasn't anything before it besides pong. They were aimed at the mainstream consumers. They had commercials all over television trying to sell their products. George Plimpton was in the ones for Intellivision.
Stingray:
--- Quote from: Zero_Hour on November 08, 2006, 08:22:12 pm ---(seriously, who bought an Atari 7800?* )
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I did, but I'm something of a console junkie.
-S
shmokes:
Tickle Me Elmo is not a mainstream product. It's a kid's toy. My point is that Nintendo is trying to expand the market beyond traditional gamers, while those systems you were pointing to were not aimed at people in general, but to a specific group of people -- gamers.
Anyway, it makes more sense to judge it by today's standards. How is Nintendo suddenly bucking tradition with a mass-market price that is higher than their last system? The Gamecube cost $199. The Wii is going to opt out of the arms race and give us an unheard of mainstream price of $250 ? ? ?
The Sega Saturn and Dreamcast were both sold at a loss. Dunno about N64. Playstation was presumably sold at a loss, considering it was more powerful than the Saturn, which was selling at a loss, and they brought it to America at $299 while it was $499.
Anyway . . . I'm just not that amazed by a $250 price point from Nintendo. They were going on and on about the incredibly low price for months before they finally announced it.
Wii - $250
Gamecube - $199
N64 - $199
SNES - $199
NES - $199
Not to mention that when all the other systems came out they were as powerful or more than all their competitors. $250 isn't unreasonable for a console launch - with inflation the consoles have technically been getting cheaper each time around -- it just ain't that special. But if Nintendo didn't want to disappoint me with the price they shouldn't have led me to believe that they were preparing to release the Wii with an unheard of low price. And if they weren't going to release it at an unheard of low price, it should be more competitive in the horsepower department. The core Xbox 360 is $50 more than the Wii. It doesn't have a hard drive, but then neither does the Wii. The tech inside their controllers ain't that expensive. A Nintendo controller costs $20 more than a MS controller.
I REALLY want a Wii as it is, but it could be, and should be better. Or cheaper. IMO. Or at the very least people who think $250 is unheard of ought to look at the history of console prices.