I agree with some points. One is the mass market test of sticking a game in a bar or public area. Another is that relying on user generated content wasn't wise (at least not unless you make it fun like Mario Paint, and at least he knocked on Wii Music for the game itself, not to "punish" it for the 2008 E3 presentation).

But on price never changing, that just doesn't make sense. Nintendo needs to find the sweet spot price for the Wii, then keep it there, as well as keeping up a steady stream of system selling games.

Wii stayed at its launch price point longer than any console in history. It is a very successful blue ocean product.

I read Blue Ocean Strategy in class, and picked up Inventor's Dilemma after Malestrom's recommendation. Both good books if you're passionate about business (which is true of pretty much everyone here.)

I'd like to posit that Nintendo did not plan to sell the Wii at $250 for 3 years. Iwata thought it would take a year or more for common people to learn about Wii. It would go through a gradual drop in price, like any other console, but then it became the hottest selling game hardware in history.

Wii, in its most aggressive design, was going to cost $99. (according to a Miyamoto interview) They only raised the price as a compromise to include more RAM and other components - things to make the core gamer happy. Perhaps Nintendo is now realizing they shouldn't have backed down from that initial design, and is moving towards the $99 Wii.

I agree with the points made here, but i must say that Reggie's opinions on this matter are not especially to be trusted. Not until we see some conclusive data, at least.

"Wii, in its most aggressive design, was going to cost $99. (according to a Miyamoto interview) They only raised the price as a compromise to include more RAM and other components - things to make the core gamer happy. Perhaps Nintendo is now realizing they shouldn't have backed down from that initial design, and is moving towards the $99 Wii."

And they would had to have sold the Wii at $400 (with possible losses) to make those people happy.

"I agree with the points made here, but i must say that Reggie's opinions on this matter are not especially to be trusted. Not until we see some conclusive data, at least."

There was an article right here that discussed preliminary sales reports in the US doubling for the Wii.

There are different sweet spots for different income brackets (and also depending on how strong is the interest in the product, but very little people is ready to get into debts for a console, so this further limit is more appliable for people earning more than the minimum necessary to afford the product), each new lower sweet spot increases potential user base, but under a certain threshold the product may become unattractive for the producer, in the case of hi-tech the biggest reason is that it can use the plants to produce more profitable items and/or because the product is so obsolete that the sales are becoming so low to make the profit unimportant despite the high margin.

This said, I agree that as long as sales are good, sticking to the current sweet spot is the wisest thing to do.

Kim/Chan(2 authors did BOS), Innovators Dilemma/Solution were by Christenson. Well was dropping the price a move because of PS360 price drops or was the price drop planned, but put into to play around the same time. The economy is certainly suffering as are people hesitant to spend money on items they don't seem as valuable as they did 2 years ago. Innovation/Value price point could have just dropped do to current circumstances. I don't think we will ever know if Nintendo was making a competitive or BOS move. One thing is for sure. The time they did it in was certainly more competitive. They could have done this next month in November to get a xmas sale feel or a month earlier to try to increase the userbase for xmas software sales.

PS. I'll say it again. Maelstrom interpretation articles are a great read. Correctly it is interpretation and that's always prone to mistakes. As for his blog, well he sounds like every other fanboy out there. "you aren't catering to me, so you are making a mistake" attitude of his. User Generated Content does find and gives massive life to games, but in these cases UGC needs to be properly supported. On the internet UGC thrives because the PC/OS is open design and sharing is easy. Custom apps to share UGC is easy(Curse Client). On a console it's a closed system. So support coming from the software is a 100% must. WiiMusic the obvious candidate for UGC content for Maelstroms Wii rant was 95% fail on support. Such creation of expressionism requires easy mass exposure. What would have worked would be uploading the created songs to a shared website making viewing the creation outside the software easy. Other Wise WiiMusic failed because it failed at what Music is. It's not about just the creation it's about expressing the creation to others and considering the annoyance of the individual FC system. Well Nintendo didn't fail to communicate the market they failed and understanding the market.