An Appropriate Price For The Wii U? - Take Two

[Serebii]

lol wut?

 

As bigger HDD sizes because easier to produce, the number that are produced increase making them cheaper. At the same time there is less demand for smaller HDD sizes and thus the quantity to which they are produced decreases.

 

Microsoft and Sony simply remain within the cost bracket they've chosen for their console. How is this not an acceptable business practice? I'd actually say that HDD sizes rising by default while remaining at the same price would make the machines more tempting.

 

Also, the Wii U already has multiple SKUs.

 

 

 

....Like?

 

Anything that isn't acutely Japanese in origin would be a nice start. I think Eternal Darkness was the last game that ticked that box.

The Wii U has two SKUs, yes. However, if they went the actual hard disk drive route, by the time it's finished, there would be at least a dozen. This way, they can stick to their guns.

 

As for the games? How is Mario "acutely Japanese"? Or Dillon's Rolling Western? Or Steel Diver? Or a craptonne of other games they make

[liger05]

The Wii U has two SKUs, yes. However, if they went the actual hard disk drive route, by the time it's finished, there would be at least a dozen. This way, they can stick to their guns.

 

As for the games? How is Mario "acutely Japanese"? Or Dillon's Rolling Western? Or Steel Diver? Or a craptonne of other games they make

 

I would go with what the consumer wants. I think the consumer prefers to have a hefty hard drive already there than having to worry about buying an external drive.

[Agent Gibbs]

Hard drives are irrelevant! they are dirt cheap to buy and attach, Hell if anything Nintendo should release a form fitted (in that it can sit under the wiiU perfectly hugging it) HDD enclosure for less than £10, hell bundle it with a new Premium SKU

 

(that started off sarcastic now i'm not convinced there wasn't a serious point somewhere in it)

 

 

anyway

 

Basic £149.99 no game, stands included

 

Premium £199 to £249.99 depending on games bundled i.e 1 game £199.99, two games £229.99, the £249.99 allowed for any premium game bundles like Monster hunter etc with a pro controller

 

A soft relaunch would be nice, hell a rebrand might help

[Daft]

The Wii U has two SKUs, yes. However, if they went the actual hard disk drive route, by the time it's finished, there would be at least a dozen. This way, they can stick to their guns.

 

As for the games? How is Mario "acutely Japanese"? Or Dillon's Rolling Western? Or Steel Diver? Or a craptonne of other games they make

 

Both Microsoft and Sony have three tiers of SKU (and Sony only introduced the basic 12Gb one recently). How is that at least a dozen?

 

I can't tell if you're joking about Mario. Dillon's Rolling Western couldn't look any more anime styled if it tried - it doesn't even look that dissimilar to Okami - and I've never heard of Steel Diver, and while it may be a good game...but I'd hardly call it a big title nor, correct me if I'm wrong, is it on the Wii U.

[Sheikah]

Thing is, I don't agree with the £200 price mark - this pushes it into the 'expensive, do I need this?' territory. Technically speaking, I can equate the PS3 to the WiiU in terms of capability of components - I have seen the PS3 500GB sold for as cheap as £170. This is even factoring in the 500GB hard drive (typically costs around £35-40) and Blu Ray reader (costs around £30-35), which would surely more than equal the cost of the gamepad.

[RedShell]

Anything that isn't acutely Japanese in origin would be a nice start. I think Eternal Darkness was the last game that ticked that box.

As for the games? How is Mario "acutely Japanese"? Or Dillon's Rolling Western? Or Steel Diver? Or a craptonne of other games they make

What's wrong with Nintendo being Japanese?

[Serebii]

Nothing, but variety is the spice of life and when you're pretty much single handedly propping up a console anything less just doesn't cut it.

Nintendo is providing variety. Just because they aren't ultra violent shooters does not mean they're not diverse.

 

I saw someone say the same thing on GAF the other day. Said Nintendo didn't have a robust lineup and then listed off just realistic racers, FPS and TPS games.

 

Both Microsoft and Sony have three tiers of SKU (and Sony only introduced the basic 12Gb one recently). How is that at least a dozen?

 

I can't tell if you're joking about Mario. Dillon's Rolling Western couldn't look any more anime styled if it tried - it doesn't even look that dissimilar to Okami - and I've never heard of Steel Diver, and while it may be a good game...but I'd hardly call it a big title nor, correct me if I'm wrong, is it on the Wii U.

 

I said a dozen within the life of a console. I wasn't talking simultaneously. Also, I'm not joking.

[Aneres11]

I got mine for £149.99 and thought it was an absolute steal. But I did have to buy a HDD on top of that as it was only a Basic model.

 

I think pricing at £200 for the Premium with a bundled in game (or even pre-installed) would be about right. These £150 numbers being thrown about are quite frankly a little unrealistic in my opinion, and I don't think I'd want to see it at that price as it has a hell of a lot of promise. Considering people are saying that's with Nintendoland and a full price game and for the premium...!

 

It all comes down to whether you are interested in the console or not and that in turn decides what you want to pay I guess.

[Mokong]

I think with the Hard Drive price thing is more that, yes while over time it costs less to produce HDD's with more memory as the HDD makers move on to bigger standard memory and phase out the smaller memory sizes it then becomes more expensive for console makers to get the now "smaller" HDD's for new units of their consoles that it launched with. This leads to having to change to a bigger more affordable HDD but also the need to launch a new SKU a situation which some would think Nintendo were trying to avoid.... ie: being forced to launch a new SKU due to factors outside their own control.

 

 

Also as has been mentioned going with a Solid-State Drive allows them to make the console smaller and consume less power which is something Nintendo aim for when designing a new console.

Also with the SSD as time goes on and bigger memory sized SSDs become cheaper the 32GB (or 8GB) SSD's in the Wii U also become cheaper for Nintendo get for future systems, allowing them to increase their profit margin without needing to change a HDD and release a new SKU.

 

Of course there's also the speed advantage that SSD's bring, though granted the OS may have been hindering that speed (though recent patches have certainly improved on load times), I'd imagine things would be a fair bit slower if it had to load things from a HDD instead of SSD.

 

So I can see why Nintendo went with the SSD over a HDD. I think it is mainly an issue for the basic model (which I think shouldn'y exsist anyway), for me 32GB seems fine for now, though I suppose I do buy my games on disc and don't buy much (non-retail) games anyway. BUt I can always pick up a 1TB USB HDD fairly cheap if ever I felt I needed extra memory.

 

The only issue I have on the side of the USB HDD is that they didn't put USB3.0 into the Wii U. This was most likely to keep costs down but I do wish they would have put in 3.0 and taken the hit in the short term as it would be more benificial in the long run.

 

Anyway back on topic of price I would say a price drop to about 250euro (think that about 200 pounds) premium model bundled with a game would be a nice sweet spot especially in the run up to Christmas. But they also need to do some serious marketing to accompany that. Dropping the price will mean nothing if nobody knows about it. I've seen Pikmin 3 ads on TV which are prolly the first Wii U ads I've seen since launch

 

They did some great adverts for the Wii (the "Wii would like to Play" guys and even all the Celeb stuff was great and struck a chord with the general public) but the initial ads for the Wii U were very "meh" were too vague and didn't really do anything to grab anyones attention. Would like to see them at least get the Celebs back in for a big Wii U campaigne soon. With a lot of games coming in the run up to Xmas if they could get a few different families/groups of Celebs for ads for different games like they used to do that could work.

 

 

Oh and also just drop the "basic" model and just go with the Premium.

[Rowan]

Sorry guys but I have to wholeheartedly disagree with you on the hard drive bit

 

If they were to include a hard drive in it, it'd cause a few things.

 

First, the console would have to be bigger and draw more power in order to fit it in. This would cause a massive issue.

 

 

Why is drawing more power be a big issue?

Maybe if the console was bigger people would realise the WiiU was a new console and not a tablet accessory:p

 

Second, Hard Drives are a problem with the consoles. Have you ever wondered why there are so many SKUs for the 360 and PS3? As time goes on, Hard Drive prices increase, yes increase. As such, Nintendo would have to keep releasing new SKUs of the Wii U every 12 months or so just to keep the same bottom line. This is an unacceptable business practice. You'd also end up with multiple SKUs at once of say 120GB, 250GB etc.

 

 

How is refreshing your lineup of SKUs every 12 months a bad business practice? With the 360 you got more value for money as instead of reducing the price they included things like Wifi, bigger hard drive, Kinect etc. The Wii had 3 SKU's over time, each one having less features than the last.

 

Flash memory is the more cost efficient method and the better choice. Especially as it's easily augmentable for a cheaper price than the others with a USB one. I got a 2TB external HDD for £70. Bargain

 

 

Including a HDD is more important for it's accessibility as opposed to the price. Yes, it might be possible to do research for an external HDD but the general public may not be able to grasp doing so as they may not be as technologically minded as your average forum poster. There's (albeit anecdotal) stories about people buying WiiU titles thinking it'll play on their Wii or even one of the Layton 3DS games being given 1 star reviews on Amazon because customers thought that it would work on their DS. If it's included in the package then there is no confusion. At the same time, Nintendo are pushing hard on their eShop and digital downloads but there is a big barrier for many as 8-32GB is filled up so quickly.

 

Please don't think I'm trying to attack/bash you. I am just genuinely curious:).

[Kav]

£179.99 - White Basic WiiU with Nintendoland

 

£229.99 - Black Premium WiiU with NSMBU

 

That would've done fine. Add in special offers on external hard-drives and they'd have been sorted.

[dazzybee]

Lose the basic completely.

 

Premium £200 - perfect. And Nintendo will sells millions over Christmas and more than xb1 and ps4 put together in the same period

Edited July 31, 2013 by Fierce_LiNk

[f00had]

I think the Asda prices for Wii U were good - £150 for Basic and £200 for Premium. They should have 2 versions of the premium pack, one with Nintendoland and one with Mario.

[Helmsly]

I think the Asda prices for Wii U were good - £150 for Basic and £200 for Premium. They should have 2 versions of the premium pack, one with Nintendoland and one with Mario.

 

yeah i'd go with this too.

[Wii]

I believe €250 would have been the sweet spot for the launch with a proper game like Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate but it wasn't possible. I know NintendoLand was designed to showcase the Wii U but I find it fairly bland. Haven't really touched it since launch. I only bought this bundle because the ZombiU bundle was sold out.

 

Add to that when the competition launch asking for €350 will look like Nintendo are criminally insane. Nintendo can deny it all they like but we all know for a fact it's coming.

[Blade]

Got my Basic for 150 quid with NSMBU

 

I paid a decent price.

[Rummy]

*about SSDs*

 

Sorry to be the guy, but the Wii U doesn't use an SSD. SSDs do use flash memory, and the Wii U uses flash memory, but it's not an SSD afaik. If it had actual SSDs in it the cost would definitely be much higher.

 

I think the Asda prices for Wii U were good - £150 for Basic and £200 for Premium. They should have 2 versions of the premium pack, one with Nintendoland and one with Mario.

 

Add a Pikmin one in now too. Essentially how the shops used to do it where the game was bundled by them not in the console box.

 

I know that IF the premium could be £200 with Pikmin or SMBU(no nintendoland) it would sell to at least one person I know, and possibly a few others too.

[markderoos]

€250,- with Wii Sports was a bargain for me in 2006, so €300,- for premium with Nintendoland felt as a very good deal (to me).

Although I didn't understand at all why there were no NSMBWU bundles (especially a Wii U - blue coloured one)...

Felt a little bit like forcefeeding me Nintendoland (which I did enjoy)

[bryanee]

I'd say £179.99 with a pack in, maybe NSMBU would be the best choice of game right now. Anything more than that and I don't think they'll have any hope come the arrival of the next gen consoles.

 

edit -

 

I'd also like to add that the price should of dropped before Pikmin and NSLBU arrived. We actually have games coming out now so those along with a price drop could of been a help to the console. Plus I want my god damn ambassador program.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Fierce_LiNk

[Fierce_LiNk]

Ok, I've been back through this thread and what I have done is copied the posts that were still relevant to this topic to a new thread. All of the posts about video game narratives and Nintendo's variety have been moved into their own threads. Please don't bring them up again in here.

 

Some posts have been slightly altered. If there's anything I've missed, then please let me know.

 

I see Amazon have put the price of the Wii U Premium back up to around £240. Far too high, imo.

[Jamba]

IMO the Wii U's appeal is being attacked on all sides. It needs to get some headway above the incoming new consoles and it needs to be competitively appealing against the current ones.

 

To this extent, it needs to be cheap AND a great value proposition. £250 with SM3DL and a special edition Wiimote Plus would bring some great multiplayer fun to a house and land people with everything they need to start enjoying the system.

 

Honestly, for this Christmas though, I don't think there is a good enough reason games wise for people to buy it yet. Summer next year seems like a better time.

[Kav]

£179.99 - White Basic WiiU with Nintendoland

 

£229.99 - Black Premium WiiU with NSMBU

 

That would've done fine. Add in special offers on external hard-drives and they'd have been sorted.

 

In fact, scrap the above. Also, scrap the Basic unit.

 

£200 WiiU with NSMBU or Nintendoland... and have the Virtual Console a £5 per month subscription service where you have access to Nintendo's whole back catalogue at any time (kind of like Netflix).

[liger05]

Is £200 the right price

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/analysis-can-nintendo-turn-wii-u-sales-around-this-christmas/0119501

 

On price drop effectiveness at ASDA and Amazon:

 

Meanwhile, when Asda cut the price of Wii U by £100 three weeks ago, this resulted in just 250 extra console sales compared with the week previously. Amazon followed suit the following week, which caused a further 667 console sales. This shows that the price cut did have an impact, but we’re hardly talking big increases here.

 

The price drops attempted have had very little impact!!

[Fused King]

I think we should all just still our tongues and look at where NINTENDO stands when the year is over.

 

That way we can:

 

* See how the PS4 and XBOXONE launches did

* See if the games NINTENDO has put out by that time do enough for them

* Ponder whether or not Mario and the heavy NINTENDO hitters really sell the kind of numbers that NINTENDO wants them to on their consoles

 

I'm off to play obscure backlog title for my Wii now.

Let's see, what's next....looks like Deadly Creatures

[Fierce_LiNk]

Is £200 the right price

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/analysis-can-nintendo-turn-wii-u-sales-around-this-christmas/0119501

 

 

 

The price drops attempted have had very little impact!!

 

I'd say that it shows that cutting the price does work, but they also need to make the general public aware that the price has been dropped. If people aren't made aware of it, how are they meant to know it's cheaper? I only knew about it because somebody on here informed me, and I in turn passed that info on to somebody else. Aside from that, I (like many others) heard nothing. When I went into my ASDA to pick it up (I had to wait an extra day or so for the console to be delivered to the store, since they weren't stocking it), they had no signs up or anything to indicate that there was a price drop.

 

The price needs to come down, but the exposure/advertising rate needs to go up.