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burninmylight on 04 January 2026
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Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

I feel like the Wii would still have succeeded as a more powerful system with a slightly higher cost, as long as it was still reasonably affordable.

The thing is though, it's easy to say this in hindsight, but in 2006 the whole concept was unproven, and if motion controls hadn't exploded the way they did, Nintendo could have been stuck with another failed system, and this time one that was expensive to make and develop for, which could have been disastrous.

They needed to hedge their bets, and making the Wii technically conservative was a prudent move at the time.

That's really all it was. Nintendo didn't want to take the risk of something unproven on an expensive chipset. 

The Wii could have definitely been more powerful, $250 was still quite a bit of money even back then. The GameCube was a massive upgrade over the N64 and was still only $199.99 just a few years earlier. 

The re-used the GameCube chipset because it made the system far, far less risky for Nintendo, if it had flopped they could have moved on to another console. 

Same thing with the DS, if the DS had not taken off they would have moved to make a better than PSP Game Boy Next for sure. 

The broke ass college kid that was me in 2006 definitely remembers that $250 was quite a bit of money back then, lol. But in 2006, you could hold down an apartment working part time on minimum wage. We had 20 fewer years of wage stagnation vs. inflation, were still years away from the '08 recession and the more recent COVID recession. If you had the dollars, those dollars went farther.

The Wii and the Switch had a lot in common leading up to their launches. Plenty of message board pundits speculated the Wii would fail because of its price compared to its graphical and processor capabilities, just like the Switch. Both consoles had humongous hype leading into their launches and came out of the gates like they were shot from a cannon because they both introduced a concept that the masses suddenly realized it needed and couldn't get elsewhere. Like I said earlier, if you make something people really want, their going to find a way to get it regardless of price.

I realize that it's easy for me to say casually now with 20 years of hindsight and no irons in the fire in Nintendo's board meetings, but if Nintendo made a more powerful Wii at an extra $50-150, it would have been fine. People still to this day go broke trying to get their hands on the latest iPhone. MFers will go and get the latest Jordans, yet sleep in the middle of the floor on an air mattress. Everybody complained about Tears of the Kindgom's $10 price hike over the MSRP of every other Switch game, yet that did nothing to stop its momentum. Make a product people want, they'll go and get it once their tears dry up over the price.