@bdbdbd: That deal is only for the UK. The WM+ bundle isn't available anywhere else around the world. They had to increase value for the console there while maintaining the same old price because exchange rates are disfavourable in the UK in comparison to everywhere else for the price they were asking.

Nintendo isn't ever going to raise the price again to 250$.

WSR and WF+ are not going to boost HW sales like the original WF and WS did. They aren't new concepts or games, they are just sequels or expansions. I doubt people will go crazy over something that's almost the same as what it was being offered for years now. WSR didn't have any effect at all. It did NOTHING. Sales were almost 50% down YoY weekly 2 weeks after WSR was launched. It only moved a couple Wii's in the first 2 weeks. Nintendo knows they don't have anything to spur interest in the near future, that's why they were forced to cut the price and thus avoiding a tragic result.

@trestres: And that isn't an indicator of what Nintendo plans to do? The same package is likely to follow after the current package is sold.

You're pretty off with WSR. It is the game for Motion Plus, what Wii Sports is to Wii Remote. So yes, WSR isn't a sequel of expansion in the same same sense as SMG 2 and Wii Fit Plus are for example.
I'd remember Iwata commenting it takes 6-8 weeks for a title to have effect, but where you're right, is that WSR didn't have the desired effect.

Wii Fit Plus in itself isn't a system seller, but it's a strong title with NSMBW and WSR, too bad WF+ and WSR were released too far in between.

Nintendo has NSMB Wii coming out in the near future, which is likely a big system seller. I have trouble imagining a title that would prove out to be bigger.

I definitely think NSMB Wii will definitely be a hit, but I wouldn't count out TALES OF GRACES or FFCC:CB, or SW3.

As for whether the Japanese sales spiked or not, the estimate on the article's hardware rise was just that; AN ESTIMATE. There is no clear evidence on whether Sony PS3 outsold Wii. All we can do is wait for the hardware info from Famitsu.

Some one else finally gets it!

A lower price also gives retailers more room for discounts.

Don't think a $149 Wii will pull in customers for Black Friday? It'll probably cause a stampede!

I've known that for a while.

Except resolution actually did sell HDTV not just because they are wide and flat. (most probably didn't understand that it's the resolution that made the HDTV look so good) That's the reason why retail store often display HDTV with some kind of HD video as you can even see the diference between 1080p vs 720p with blu-ray. SD actually looks worst close up on a HDTV than a tube which it where someone will be viewing on display in the store.

I don't believe Malstrom on that UGC thing.  In America, Nintendo will have published 33 titles for the Wii by the end of its 4th calendar year.  For that same time period, Nintendo published 35 games for both the GC and N64, and 30 games for the SNES.  Nintendo has also published 12 WiiWare titles.  I would expect to see a lot less titles if Nintendo really abandoned a bunch of projects.  Maybe if we see a real absence of games from Nintendo over the next 1 or 2 years or so I will believe him.

If you looked at the percentage of potential customers who were willing to buy a particular console at a certain point in time it would probably look like a bell curve. As time goes on the mean value people are willing to pay gets reduced, and the bell curve becomes more distorted, because people have already bought the console; and newer ‘cooler’ gadgets come along taking interest away from the console.

As a guess, I would say that the mean price people are willing to pay for a console at launch is (probably) about $300 with a standard deviation of $50; and over an 18 month period the mean value is reduced by (roughly) the standard deviation, with the standard deviation being reduced by 20% (or, after the first 18 months the mean would fall to $250 with the standard deviation at $40, and at 3 years the mean would be around $210 with a standard deviation of $32, and so on). Now, if this estimate is within reason this would mean that the Wii started off being seen by most interested consumers as a value, and now (3 years after launch) most potential customers see the Wii as being too expensive.

Now, I should mention that not all consoles would be seen to be worth the same amount at launch and not all consoles will lose value at the same rate; but I doubt any console has more than 50% of potential customers seeing it as being worth more than (about) $350, and I doubt a console could go more than (about) 2 years without seeing a measureable reduction in demand at a static price without some heavy bundling or redesign.

With that said, I don't think the Wii's price had become a problem yet ... but the important word is "yet" and given another 18 months there would be few people who would buy a Wii at $250 or respond to a $50 price reduction.

I saw a dad buy another wii because it cut in price.. I honestly am shocked, Its like nintendo injected the wii with a "you need to buy me" chemical