why?!?

In an interview with the Japanese website Touch-DS (via Kotaku), Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had some interesting things to say about hardware price drops.

To date, the Wii is the only console this generation not to receive a single price cut, and judging by Iwata's comment, it may stay that way a little while longer.

"This is my personal thinking, but when the model's price-tag drops over time, manufacturers are telling consumers it's better to wait, and I've always thought that was a mistake," Iwata said. This seems to be an opinion one has the luxury of holding when their console is entering its third holiday season, and they still can't meet demand.

Evidently, Iwata went on to explain that he doesn't want early adopters to feel as if they took a loss for supporting the console before a price drop hit (this coming from the same company that flatly admitted they're holding back the U.S. DSi launch in order to sell more DS Lites). Perhaps Iwata makes a good point, but then again... the Wii can't stay at $250 forever, can it? It does have to get a price drop at some point, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Actually, the Wii does not HAVE to drop in price. There's no law saying it has to.

Look at the DS Lite. Here in sweden, it hasn't really dropped in price since it launched, and the DS only dropped once the Lite was released.

They really don't have to drop the price. But they will, sometime in the future. Probably not within a year, anyway.

Iwata is a wise and smart guy so I don’t know what he was smoking when he said that :P

I won’t get pissed when they cut the price because I bought it and didn’t care what it cost. If I wanted it cheaper I would have waited.

Oh yeah this is OLD!

If I was selling a product, and I couldn't keep up with demand as is, I'm not sure why I would lower the price.  Why lower it if you can't sell anymore than you already are selling, just to hurt your own profit?

There's your answer.

No reason to cut the price if you can't even meet the demand. Wiis to this day are still being outsold like crazy.

There was a thread about this a week ago or so. The point remains though. There's no reason for the Wii to come down in price now even if it weren't for what he's saying. Trust me, Nintendo, just as anyone else will lower the price if needed in order to sell more consoles.

To put it simply, so that everyone understands.

"hahaha It's selling like Hotcakes, we don't need a price cut"

"We will probably raise the price next quarter"

I really don't get why people are so surprised and upset the Wii hasn't had a price cut.

Lets pretend you're in the business of making money. If you product is constantly selling out, should you decrease price to increase demand? Of course not.

Selling like water in a desert = no price cut.

@chopset: the only reason a company lowers it’s price is because the system is not selling good any more. In this case it would be stupid to do so with the Wii because they are selling out already. But that doesn’t mean it won’t go down in price, it will but when sales are slowing down