Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, commented on various topics concerning the PS3 price point, offered a surprise hint at Nintendo,s Wii launch price and gave his observations about Sony,s motion sensor controller in statements given to Game Daily.
Iwata expressed concerns over the high price point of the PS3 by observing, "I think the ultimate decision has to be made by the actual customer and as one of the potential customers of PS3, of course I think it’s going to be kind of a [difficult] price point for anybody to purchase; that sentiment has been shared by a number of people working in this industry that I’ve been able to talk to so far. Probably there’s a huge gap between how the platform supplier wants to price it and how the customers want the supplier to price it."
While it is still too early to tell how consumers will actually respond to the $499/$599 price points of the PS3, many industry observers are watching carefully to see if the PlayStation faithful will be able to swallow such an expensive pill.
When Iwata was asked about how much the Wii would cost, he gave a solid clue as to what the Wii may be sold for by saying that it would be, “…"an affordable price point – and when we say affordable, you may want to check our past records of price points."
Iwata also stated that the announcement would be coming “in the near future.”
Nintendo,s recent game consoles have been traditionally priced lower than their competition. The Nintendo 64 and GameCube both launched at $199. If Iwata,s hint is taken literally, that would mean that the Wii would be at or near the $199 price range. If so, it would be an incredible bargain in the arena of next-gen game consoles. Most guesses from within the game industry place the Wii price point in the neighborhood of $250.
Iwata expressed no surprise at Sony,s announcement of their version of the motion sensing controller at E3. An apparent copying of Nintendo,s motion sensing controller idea: "We were anticipating that Sony would make that kind of announcement, so I had to make a kind of wry smile at the time. Having said that, however, putting the motion sensing technology into the classic [Sony] controller, which is going to be held with two hands, is pretty much different from the motion sensor being incorporated into the Wii remote or the combination of the Wii remote and the nunchuk controller. There’s a huge gap between the two, I can tell you, with that whole experience, so I really don’t think that the inclusion of motion sensing into Sony’s classic type of controller can affect in one way or the other the advantage that we have with the Wii controller."
