There was a thread discussing this recently, and if Nintendo is following Blue Ocean Strategy, there will not be a price cut. There might be some different bundles coming, however.

At any rate, I think Nintendo is going to have a massive holiday. I think it will be bigger than last year due to better supply, and better software.

i think it should drop in price to $199 or $179, but it wont though.

If it looks like Nintendo will miss their projections by a significant margin, you can bet the company they'll have an appropriate response. And at this stage in the game, new colors just won't cut it.

As far as bundles go, about the only one I could see as being a huge hardware mover would be a Wii Fit/Wii Sports bundle at $299, or about $40 less than purchased separately.

Assuming the balance board/Wii Fit is profitable at $90, and I'm almost certain that it is, it would cost Nintendo less than a $50 price cut off the base $249 Wii Sports bundle. A Wii Fit bundle makes the most sense considering it is the package most extended market consumers have been buying.

The other option Nintendo has, albeit less favorable, is to do the opposite and unbundle Wii Sports, offering the basic console at $199 and selling Wii Sports for $20-30. Presumably, many new Wii consumers would skip Wii Sports and simply pick up Wii Sports Resort instead, which still translates to a $250 initial sale for Nintendo.

Or Pachter could be right this time and we may well see the same Wii Sports bundle being sold in November at $199 which would likely spark a buying frenzy as would be expected with the first price cut since debut. Nintendo has been building up a LOT of unsold inventory this year and those who think consumers will blindly snap up all of them with out any significant game changers are probably kidding themselves. And no, New Super Mario Bros. and Wii Fit Plus are not significant game changers.

If the latter happens, I'd like to see who mans up among those who are swearing up and down that the idea of a price cut is impossible/unnecessary and says "Wow. Could I have been more wrong?! Pass me the Crow!"

I'm with Patcher on that one.
Nintendo will miss its targets significantly if they don't do anything.
Now they could always decide not to lower the price, miss the targets by a mile and loose any market credibility...

We're not saying it's impossible or that it wouldn't increase sales, naturally it would, however it wouldn't be a solution to the real problem. Which is beginning to lose the battle against disinterest.

What we are saying is that it goes against their strategy and the way they view the market. A price cut will only be taken as an emergency tactic, at least this is what will happen if Iwata continues to follow the Blue Ocean Strategy and doesn't make a panic move.

Patcher is right. I believe Nintendo will cut Wii to $199 in Nov.

If they only take a price cut as an "emergency tactic" that means any price cut is an open admission that the platform has peaked at best or is in a tailspin decline at worst. Looking at the YoY numbers, it's looking like the latter.

Is that really the message they want to send?

This is the point at which one has to stop quoting a theory, successful up to this point or not, and start reacting directly to changes in the market rather than ignoring them because "the theory's been working fine so far."

There are ways of dropping price on a product without sending the impression it's a panic induced drop to unload excess inventory and hit projections. SCE has done a pretty admirable job of doing this since the PS1 and nobody interpreted their price drops as "panic" but rather passing savings on improved efficiency/reduced hardware production costs directly to the customers.

I will be completely unsurprised if it happens, and I expect a lot of critics to have no response.

What critics u mean?

Those who insist when Pachter says anything regarding future trends in the gaming business, the exact opposite is a shoe in to happen.

He's probably close to about 50/50 on his predictions even though "game market predictor" is really not his occupation. He breaks down the available industry insider information and then typically throws out his opinion to the gaming media based on the compiled data. Right or wrong, at least he bases his opinions based upon a fairly broad pool of hard financial data as opposed to personal preferences and biases.