Miyamoto Says Wii Was Supposed To Be A Sub-$100 Console
Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview with BusinessWeek that the Wii was supposed to be a sub-$100 console, where the focus was on the software, and not hardware. New technology however, increased the price drastically. He said,
“My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn’t used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded.”
He added that while they settled with the wireless motion controller, it still took them a long time (over a year) to tweak and modify so it worked properly.
“It worked just fine in the ideal environment, but bright lights and sunlight interfered with its accuracy. And we had to test it in rooms of all sizes. The final version wasn’t finished until this summer.”
The Wii launches later this month in the US, while Japan and Europe will have to wait until early December. 32 Wii games and 30 Virtual Console games will be available this year.
Read [Thanks, Anuban]
November 16th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
$250 is OK.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:38 am
wouldn’t it have been complete crap if they didn’t do anything at all to the console, i wouldn’t have bought it, i like to look at more realistic things as well as great games.
November 17th, 2006 at 3:18 am
More realistic things? What do you mean?
If Nintendo sold it at $50, then anyone could afford it. If they focusssed their money on games, then anyone who bought it would be happy because the games would be of high quality. Graphics aside – what’s wrong with that?
November 17th, 2006 at 4:02 am
…. If the games costed as much as the system I wouldn’t buy it (that’s almost true for PS3), but let’s face it, Nintendo would have completely failed as a company if they fundamentally resold the GCN. I actually am impressed with the graphics, TP keeps looking better and better. Also the Wii is capable of better graphics than Xbox, it might seem otherwise because right now designers are concentrating on the controller. Now that they can get AI Live the graphics will start to look amazing, as long as they are compared to last gen graphics and not the overkiller PS3 or 360 graphics.