Why ask Wii?

[Roger]

Nintendo, you gotta love 'em still hanging on with ground breaking ideas - those stilly little freaks. You have to admire the finesse approach Nintendo has taken with Wii. We already heard about Wii's unique "positional" controller that will make some interesting gaming. But now the latest information from the Nintendo camp is the pricing of Wii. It'll be a low - low $250 bucks.

This is great news for casual gamers (and parents) everywhere.

"Yes, jr. we know that you want a PS3 for Christmas but mommy and daddy like having a house and clothes."

The price gives Nintendo an undeniable edge in the console war. And while we're on the war analogy one might say that in a war of market space cost advantage is the ultimate advantage. I believe it was Von Clausewitz who said that underselling the competition was a continuation of politics by other means.

Personally (and occasionally I'll allow myself to get personal on this blog) I like the Microsoft Xbox360. I think it strikes the perfect cost/technology balance for the relative lifespan of this current generation of console game machines. While I appreciate the brute force approach of Sony in giving its customers the ultimate technology of the day, I think they crossed a cost line that's resulting in delays. I'm certain Sony will delay again and/or raise the price when it actually arrives.

Rushing to ad Blu-ray, HDMI and an "on paper" implementation of 1080P are all unnecessary in real world application. For the next two to four years (the relative lifespan of this gen of consoles) there isn't likely to be any advantage in the higher capacity of Blu-ray disk. DVD's 9Gigs will work fine for next gen games, but we'll see.

1080P will almost certainly not be used in games. PS3's 1080P capability will be strutted out for a cut-scene or two but will otherwise languish. Memory and CPU (system resources) devoted to resolution greater than 720P isn't going to ad enough to games that can't be better used simply mapping textures and calling flashy APIs. All 1080P can really do better than 720P is a bit more anti-aliasing for moving images and I think most gamers and developers will find that 720P does a more than adequate job.

I have to hand it to Nintendo, they're not simply leveraging themselves as the "just happy to be here" third wheel in the console war. They're really taking it to the big two players using that marvelously heroic attribute; innovation. Although I am unlikely to buy Wii myself, underselling the big two by such a wide margin really warms my heart.

Nintendo is the TiVo of the console game war or like the Prussian's of the 18th century European stage. They may be small in stature but potent in the eyes of all competitors.

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[SteveCallas]

I don't think the final price has been determined - the official statement is that it will not cost MORE than $250. In all likelihood, it will come in between $150-$200.

[Sonnie]

PS2 started out at $199 and isn't it less than 100 bucks now?

[SteveCallas]

Actually, the PS2 launched at $300 and stayed at that price for almost two years.