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Wii Release Date & Price

$250 on November 19th. Done and done.

 :-D WII!!!!!  :-D

Bah, that's expensive and they broke with tradition. Those games better be awesome or Microsoft is going to squash both Sony and Nintendo here in the US. At least the current buzz is that the system will include Wii Sports and two sets of Remotes/Nunchuks so at least it's not $249.99 for a bare system.

I just got disgusted.


I may not buy it. I mean, fuck. No Mario or Zelda at launch? Is that known as missing the fucking point? I think it is. Oh, and Gears of War will beat it to the market. It's also coming out the same week as DOAX2 an Gothic 3. Two games that will have no effect whatsoever on the launch of the Wii. Final Fantasy XII comes out two weeks before it.

I didn't expect either Mario or Zelda as a launch title.

I think packaging a game is wise, especially a non-serious game that introduces people to the controller. As far as price, pretty much as expected.

What the hell is there to buy then? Kid Icarus? Red Steel? Please.

Japanese Wii launching after US Wii and for less money? At least that's what Joystiq, who are quoting Famitsu who are live blogging the event, is reporting.

Google translated version of Nintendo PR:

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/news/060914.html

So only one set of controllers (I'm assuming that's what the " [nunchiyakukontorora]" means) and no pack in game -- i.e. the usual Japanese configuration. The 12/2 date is still odd though. Why would the US get it so much earlier?

---

Everyone　
2006 September 14th
The nintendo co. corporation

2006 December 2nd, 25,000 Yen
“WiiTM” sale

  Because the Nintendo Co. corporation December 2nd this year (Saturday), (consumption including tax desired retail price) with the country 25,000 Yen new amusement machines “Wii” which create the electronic amusement experience inside completely new home to sell, we inform.

  This Wii which we sell (pronounces “[ui]”) or less is included in substance set.
*Wii itself         ×1
*Wii remote control strap attachment         ×1
* [nunchiyakukontorora]         ×1
*Wii private AC adapter         ×1
*Wii private AV cable         ×1
*Wii itself private stand         ×1
*Wii itself private auxiliary plate         ×1
*Wii private sensor bar         ×1
* Plug server stand         ×1
* Single three dry cell batteries         ×2


  Furthermore, overseas, it is the schedule which in the next few days is announced from the respective local subsidiary company in regard to sale schedule and price.

Above　

Didn't you get a 360 at launch?  And a PSP?

The 360 was a dramatic improvement over the xbox. The wii is not. Also, CoD2 and King Kong get 2 thumbs up from me.

I bought the PSP mostly for Lumines. Considering I've logged over 80 hours and I NEVER log 80 hours in games anymore, it was worth it.

If CoD2 and King Fucking Kong made the 360 seem like a wise investment to you at launch but the Wii just isn't a dramatic enough improvement, than yeah, the Wii probably isn't for you.

Did you play King Kong? It was really fucking good.

I'm not sure something that was also released on a every other console and the PC all of the sudden makes 360's launch lineup less craptacular.  PSP's launch sucked too for games. Both got steadily better over time and are now really solid (360 probably more so).

Wii is just going to launch without two Nintendo staples everyone thought would be there and what looks to be a somewhat shakey launch lineup.  Gamecube's launch wasn't anything spectacular even with Super Mario Waterhose.

Same as it ever was.

You'll buy two.

Wii.com is live (http://www.wii.com), but with only Japanese content at the moment.

Ah ha, now it makes sense -- Zelda is a launch title for the Wii in Japan. Apparently Nintendo thinks we're stupid and uneducated enough to buy the Wii without there being a flagship title available at launch while they know better than to do that in Japan.

Launch title for Japan? So America has to wait 2 weeks to get it? Or 3 months? What the hell are they doing? Whatever, I get my pink DS tomorrow.

Muahahaha - for once it's their fugly japanese who's going to feel the pain of playing imported games in some weird, incomprehensible language.

Hooray for not preordering!  Anyone look back to see what our bets were?  I know I missed it.

By the by, it's not like Mario was supposed to be a launch title, at least in the recent months; 2007 is something of a surprise, though.  My house still smells like Mario Sunshine, anyway.  I suppose I will wait for Twilight Princess, myself, since the only other launch title that has me interested to a significant degree is Raving Rabbids (I'd say Metroid but I lost interest in Echoes when I got to Quadraxis).


Hmmm, I think you have it.  I also think Sony has a bigger foothold in NA than in JP, though, which might have some effect as well.  I am interested to see if anyone spins the "worldwide launch" that was hyped, or if we'll just get a photo of Miyamoto performing a comical shrug.

Nintendo will get many points from me for packaging two controllers, if it turns out to be true.

I'm guessing the two controllers is the one standard Wii controller with nunchuk and the one "classically-styled" controller that will be used for stuff like SSBB and such.

Most sites today have confirmed Twilight Princess as a US launch title. From Gamespot: (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6157572.html?tag=latestnews;title;4)

Okay that's bizarre then. I have no idea why the Japanese launch would be delayed by two weeks. And only one set of controllers. Boo!

The Wii will cost less in Japan because it won't have Wii Sports packaged with it.

It'll come with one controller (set of controllers really, the mote and chuk), will come with Wii Sports, which even though it's a light game is still better than the no game that's been packaged with every system since the PS2, and be $150 less than a 360. Sounds decent to me. Not having Zelda or Mario on launch really means shit to me, even though I plan on buying Zelda. All I care about is getting Madden by Christmas, and having Virtual Console games for the wife.

Why isn't EB letting me pre-order this?  Every other time I decide that Best Buy is too far away and stoop to purchasing from EB they harass me with the pre-order questions and yet this time, when I actually want to, my money isn't good enough for them.  Apparently "they aren't doing that for systems anymore".  I wonder if Best Buy will do it.

Guess they've cooled down on the thought of pre-selling consoles.  Don't want a whole bunch of angry customers, "Why can't I get my Wii?!?!  I PREORDERED, damn it!". 

But, are we facing any sort of shortages with the Wii launch?

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Man, for some reason my first thought on this news was "Yep, time to bury Sony." $250 and launching in November? With Twilight Princess as a potential launch title? Oh yeah, I'm a Wii60 person all the way.

They haven't specified launch numbers, but they claim to be able to ship 6 million units by the end of the year. We'll see.

I only just now became able to skim some Wii sites.  Right now I see that the Wii will be region-free, which I think is fucking sweet.  It won't play DVDs, but who gives a shit?  Also, seems like Metroid Prime Corruption will have a "expert" mode in which it controls a lot like a mouse-n-keyboard game, so I'm a bit more interested in that.

Also, I re-read Trippy's translation and it does clearly say one controller.  I am 95% certain I heard reliably that the old-school controller will be a separate item.  I'll have to read up on this some more.

Eh. I looked at the title lineup for the first 6 months of the product's lifecycle and found two I'd definitely play and only a few more that even sound interesting. I think I'm going to throttle my enthusiasm and move this back to a 'wait and see' item; maybe pick one up a half-year to a year out once the library develops more.

Bad news... the Wiimote will cost $40 and the Wiichuk will cost $20 to get extras. That's an expensive fucking controller. Hopefully the 3rd party controllers won't be too long in coming. And the press release I have in English says definitely 1 Wiimote and chuk per box.

Third party controllers not made by Hori suck dick.

I'm upset about this Wii launch still. I just can't get past how weak it is for a Nintendo launch. I'd rather a bad mario game than no mario at all.

(http://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/topics/wii_preview/presentation/img/slide23.jpg)

Not so long list of Third Party Developers. No NISA on there. I heard they were going to the 360. Looks like it might be true.

I see that Smash Brothers isn't even on the horizon from the release lists. Makes sense though if that stuff about Nintendo not releasing the libararies for online play until 6-7 months after the console drops is true.

Yay, I have absolutely no reason to buy a Wii for like half a year!

Weak post-launch list.

Gamecube 2. You heard it here first.

Yup, that seems like a fairly poor launch line-up. Even the N64, with only Pilotwings and Mario64, had a better lineup on Day One.

From the American press conference:


Durrrrr.


Smash Bros?

If the video is to be trusted, we should have SMW on VC.  But maybe you wanted a new Mario game.

As for the picture of logos, I was under the impression that was a list of people supporting the VC.  It's right in the middle of some Virtual Console pics in the presentation (http://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/topics/wii_preview/presentation/04.html).

The thing that really, really makes me angry and sick is that Link is now right-handed.  For shame.

Much better than the Xbox360's launch list.

What are you talking about? We get a system with a magic fucking wand and 90% of the launch is licensed movie shit. Happy Feet? Barnyard? Cars? Avatar? Spongebob? Open Season? Ice Age 2? DBZ? Disney? Godfather?

This list is insulting. The Xbox launch had 1, count them, ONE licensed thing. King Kong. And it was 20x better than almost all the other licensed shit out there. But hey, if you're into shit like Ant Bully and Dance Factory, I suppose it's strong.

Edit: See, I don't speak in terms of what mothers will buy for their kids and shit. I don't give a fuck about that. I care about games I'll like. And even though I'll buy Bust A Move, it's insulting that it's the only title on there that I actually remotely want.

I'm interested in trying out Tiger Woods with the Wii controller.

It's a good excuse to yell "FOUR!" and smack my brother in the head.

It's an EA game -- what makes you think it's not going to be a straight port of the GameCube version?

I do agree with schild's underlying point about that particular list.  There is, in fact, not one title in that list that I am interested in.  I think the list of titles is huge numerically, and I have an expectation that Nintendo will sell a lot of units, but as he said, there's not a lot in there for me.  That said, even I like to play some Minesweeper once in a blue moon, and I'll give Wii Sports a whack.  I'd likely not buy it, but since it's bundled in... also it could be good practice before I drop cash on a "real" game.

As for why an EA game would not be a simple Cube port... tough call there.  EA professes a great interest in Wii, presumably because they have a belief that it will expand the market much like the DS.  On the other hand, it's fucking EA.  On the other hand, if EA pushes out a big-name golf game on Wii and makes a bitch use analog sticks, that can only spell trouble for them while trying to garner a customer base.

The one thing I do know is that Red Steel looks fucking awesome and from what I've read it is going to be freaking outraegous.  The sports games sound like fun, but I'm really interested in Red Steel.  I might pre order it.  This will be the first time ever that I've preordered a gaming system.

I do agree though, the line up looks so-so.  We shall see though.  There's this one movie/cartoon based game that was released that I thought was going to be ass-on-a-stick, but I started hearing it was great so I rented it and I LOVED it!  I'm kicking the shit out of myself because i can't remember the damn name right now (I'm at work and trying to make it through the day on only 4 hours of sleep).  It was one of those goofy cartoons too that you would think would suck as a game (like Pokemon, Spongebob, etc...).

I'm going to buy it just for the new Dragon Quest game, the last one was fantastic.  After a few weeks when I'm done with it I will look at the other games.  Is the SSX game new or is it just a port of one of the others?

From what I can tell, launch day titles are:

Excite Truck
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Call of Duty 3
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Rapala Tournament Fishing
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
World Series of Poker
Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Madden NFL 07
Need for Speed: Carbon
Elebits
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII
Far Cry: Vengeance
GT Pro Series
Monster 4x4: World Circuit
Open Season
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Red Steel
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent

Like most, if I get a Wii at launch I'll be picking up Zelda, but I'll also be keeping an eye on reviews for Madden, Red Steel, Excitetruck, and Trauma Center.

Now, on that list there are things I want.  Twilight Princess, Trauma Center and Raving Rabbids.  Also Elebits looks enough like Katamari that I think my son will like it, so I'll be getting that.  He's not even three but can ALMOST play Animal Crossing on DS, so I am confident the Wiimote will totally be his bag, baby.

I don't know if I'll get Splinter Cell, I have a bad track record of making any headway into those games despite how outstanding they are.  Besides, I figure it will be better on 360.

All of those look decent. Zelda and Red Steel for sure, I think the THDJ is a Wii exclusive designed for the controller also. And who can pass up Monkey Ball. That right there is more games than Xbox360 has that im interested already. So for me, yeah its a much better launch.

Madden for Wii sound pretty interesting - multiplayer hijinks for sure. I like to get a Madden game once every 5 years or so. Not sure when that is coming out though. It should have high comedy value.

Madden is a release day title, but it won't have online multiplayer this year.

By altering my lunch habits, for the last 3 weeks so that I only eat out once a week and never any place "good" I've already managed to sock away just under half the Wii's price. Tack on a few more weeks and I can nab a few games, excellent.

 Were I to attempt this for a PS3, I'd have another 15 weeks to go just to get the base system. A 360, 8 more weeks for a base system.

Yeah, I know which one I'm buying and why.  I could care less about not having 'teh shiney' as I'd rather my kids have 'teh food.'

More bothersome news, David Yarnton of Nintendo UK (http://www.thewiire.com/news/491/1/Yarnton_Wii_Not_RegionFree) calls Perrin Kaplan a liar: the Wii will be region-encoded.  Furthermore, VC games will also be region-specific.

I'm interested in the Marvel game, but that's coming out for the 360, so that'll be the platform I'll buy it for since it actually supports HD.

I dunno, I'm getting cold feet on the whole Wii thing now that we're getting close to the point of sale.  I think I'll wait for some reviews on how the picture is (has to be at least somewhat better than Gamecube on an HDTV) and how the Wiimote handles.  Then I'll wait for a game I actually want to buy, because Zelda has never done anything for me.

I am ready to go buy a Wii on launch day, but I am very worried about the non-HD. I have a large TV (60 inch) and I will be really bummed if it is crappy looking.

It's going to look at least as good as the Cube, which I have no problems with, but then I only have a 34".  The only game I have that actually looks BAD on the Cube is Warrior Within.  But if you want to see the sweat beads on Lebron James' forehead, you'll need to get the 360.

The Wii will probably look like trash on my new LCD. Whatever though.

I'm thinking I'll try to get one for myself for late-December holiday. Fortunately(lawl?) I have a fairly small non-HD television, so lack of HD really doesn't bother me. Going to hold off from release to avoid any unexpected problems. Hopefully there'll be enough in stock to pick one up. If not, I'll just wait. While there's a couple games on the launch list that interest me, it's nothing I can't live another day without. Almost more than that I want to reward Nintendo for keeping a reasonable price tag in a setting where costs seem to keep going up.

Gameplay over graphics for me.  I still play Grandia1 and Earthbound on my HD, and those games look like SHIT by todays standards.  Some may argue Earthbound looked bad when it was released, even.  I'd be more worried about it if console games were more prone to using the extra horsepower to design more intricate and complex environments than upping the graphics to 11.  I'd love to see a privateer game on the 360 or ps3 whose dev team felt dreamcast-level graphics were adequate so they could instead focus the great majority of dev time building and refining a universe for me to pillage and plunder through.

I want both, and I'm willing to pay for it.

The more I look at the gameplay movies the more the Wiimote looks like a gimmick that I'd quickly get really goddamned sick of.  Most of the games shown rely on what basically amounts to just quick mouse gestures to perform an in-game move; hardly something revolutionary.  Also, for games like Red Steel where there actually is a direct correlation between wiimote pointing and on-screen action it still looks extremely cludgy, since you have to aim the pointer to the screen edge to even be able to turn around.  Again, it looks gimmicky and can frankly be done more satisfyingly for the PC.

Yeah, I have a CRT from 2002 so... well, whatever, like you said.  It is what it is, I'm not buying another TV for a while.

I think a Wii game would benefit from a simple palette in much the same way as a Cube game, but who knows?  If I keep my expectations on a GC level, I think I'll not be disappointed.  The main reason Warrior Within looks like ass on the Cube is the dithering, or lack of, since it uses a lot of colors that aren't in the sixteen-pack of crayons.  Something like Metroid Prime, Paper Mario, or several other late-era Cube titles stick to the sixteen-pack idea and don't look nearly as grainy as some other games.  Naturally, this does not bode well for cross-platform titles.

I want both gameplay and graphics as well.  Too bad about the current crop of consoles.  The 360 is looking up, though, what with Broken Saints.  Maybe it has another game I'd like to play as well.

I thought someone has posted the real-money cost of VC games, but I don't see it.  It's here:
http://www.nintendolife.com/articles/2006/09/15/the_cost_of_wii_points

Bleh, I thought they were going with lower prices.  :|

You are ostensibly paying for convenience.  I'd rather pay $5 for a game than emulate for "free", and it would cost at least that much to obtain an original cart in many cases.  Nevermind that my older consoles generally don't work.

I quoted free because, while I'm not paying actual money to emulate, it is a substandard experience most of the time.

Yeah, those prices really aren't that out of whack until you start trying to bring in the emulation argument. And the experience of just FINDING the damn emus is worth spending the $5-$10 for just to avoid.

I'm so enthused about the Virtual Console idea not because of the particular games offered, but because it might shake up some of the asshat publishers in the industry who actively refuse to offer back catalog stuff. Maybe some of the PC games that have gone the way of abandonware might be resurrected at some point (X-Com) in an emulation system and make the rights holders some money in the bargain. Things like XBox Live Arcade, Gametap and the VC are all good things for the industry.

Substandard???  With the right filter (Super Eagle, Kreed's, etc) the games often look better than they originally did.  Get yourself a wireless gamepad and hook your computer up to your TV and bingo bango, you've got yourself every 80's/early 90's console out there.  Oh, and did I mention useful shit like save-states?  Substandard, my ass.

Most people probably have no desire to hook their PC up to their TV.

Also, finding good ROMs is a pain in the ass, especially with so many viruses and shit hanging around those sites.

Sites?  LOL, n00bler.

BitTorrent is your friend.  You say you want to entire ROMset for all NES, N64, SNES, MAME, and Genesis systems?  3 seconds in TorrentSpy will give you the complete compilations.

C'mon.  What about Happy Feet?

Let me know when you get all that shit set up for me.  I'm tired.  I'll be downstairs playing my PS2.

Finding good ROMs is probably the easiest part of the whole emulation thing.  Just sayin'.  There's also good old USENET, the Web's creepy old uncle with all the porno in his back room.

1) Movie license
2) Apparently the main character has a speech impediment
3) Dancing

Then again, it's only $29.99.  We'll see, but somehow I think my Future-Wii will be dedicated to Future-Zelda for a while.

http://wiitimer.com/ (http://wiitimer.com/)