Industrygamers
Wii finally received the much rumored price cut to $149 earlier today and Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime is confident that this will help the Wii expand its demographic even more. Speaking with MSNBC (via Eurogamer), Fils-Aime commented, "For us this is a very important move. This is only the second price reduction for Wii hardware since we launched back in November 2006. And in the last home console cycle, the leading system at the time sold almost 50 percent of its volume at a price point of $149 or below." So far the Wii has sold 86 million units worldwide. If the console can now sell 50% of its total volume, that would be impressive indeed. PS2 by comparison has sold over 150 million. "Typically a system peaks in the second year of availability and then gradually declines," Fils-Aime continued. "Wii was fortunate to have a number of very strong selling years in its third and fourth year of availability. And from our perspective, the curve that we're on is natural and to be expected but importantly, the sales curve is higher than any other system." Importantly, Fils-Aime sees the new, low Wii price bringing in all sorts of new customers for Nintendo. "When we launch our new home system sometime in 2012 we think the consumer buying in will look very different than the consumer who's going to be buying a Wii now," he stated. "What we've seen in this business is that there are certain consumers who love being first - they have to have the absolute latest hardware - and there are other consumers that are perfectly happy to wait until the game library is much more robust and they have a wider range of options." "There are a lot of households where kids will be off from school and the parents are either looking for celebratory presents as the children finish the school year or they're looking for a fun exercise to keep the kids busy and happy during the summer time frame. We think there is a wide range of consumers that are wanting to purchase a Wii and what they have been waiting for is this type of announcement." http://www.industrygamers.com/news/wii-price-cut-will-attract-new-audience-says-nintendo/
