Lifespan of the Wii?

[Erik Aston]

Nintendo may take a brief lead on the basis of its early fanbase/pricing advantage, but as the other systems get lower prices and more games, that won't be maintainable. Sony can see significant improvement by just lopping $100 off the system's price every year. Nintendo really can't boost demand in that same fashion.

Oh, of course they can. Going from $250 to $200 to $170 might impact demand as much as going from $600 to $500 to $400. They're both 1/3 drops. Except those Wii drops would be entrenching it deeper into the mainstream, not just trying to get TO the mainstream. Wii is the only console with any chance of getting to the $100 price or below--EVER. Sales will be redonkulous at that point. Sony probably only has 3 $100 price cuts possible, and they almost certainly won't get below $200 in the next 5 years.

Has Nintendo expanded the portable market in Japan? No (perhaps there are new buying segments, but they've got a long ways to go to catch the original GB). Will they? Probably.

GBA only had about a 3 year lifespan in Japan. I rolled my eyes at the "three-pronged" strategy because I knew the market would not adopt two portables from the same company, and apparently the entire nation of Japan did the same.

GBA had 3 years and 9 months before DS launched. 193 weeks. It sold 14.5 million in that period. DS has sold 16.3 million in 124 weeks. GB/GBC hit 30 million in week 612, almost 12 years in, just before the GBA launched. All numbers from VGC.

I agree that the "three pillar" thing was one of the weirdest PR explanations ever. Two handhelds from one company was obviously not going to work.

Why would Konami spend $20 million creating a game, then just drop it? No way in hell this project is getting cancelled. Worst case scenario: it gets ported to 360.

Well... Konami can't very well launch a game they want to sell 5 million copies on a system with an install base of 7 or 8 million... And loss of exclusivity is a big deal when you've got the highest priced console.

For Wii, the big question is how long demand will continue to go like this. PS3 will definitely see a boost, though it won't be any time soon.

There's little reason to think Wii demand will get smaller. Even "fad" products can last a couple years, which is enough time to establish permanent momentum.

And back before Feb NPD numbers came out, people were saying below 200K a month in NA would be a disaster... Now above 150K would be surprising. PS3 better get a "boost" before said boost merely gets them back up to Jan levels of demand.