Wii Launch and Price Revealed

[Spasmolytic]

Originally Posted by Dyne

So how else are you going to justify that price. I heard that straight from the horse's mouth and that's literally what all of the EB employees were told: if you want DVD, then you're going to pay for this item to cover the cost of DVD licencing. And hell, you couldn't compare the cost of a crappy PS2 model to an Xbox back in the day, so cost of the machine is irrelevant. Xbox would've cost at LEAST $20-30 more if it included DVD playback and that is a fact.

But damn, it just makes sense, so why are you making a snide comment like that? Even if I was $10 over or whatever, I still pointed out a fact.

I believe Stu pointed out (by clarifying what Jonbos quote said) that DVD playback would raise production cost, but not necessarily raise price.

Yes XBox did cost at least $30 more, because that remote cost at least $30 (as its current price is $29.99). However, if the Xbox did play DVDs without the remote, I would not suspect that the XBox would have raised its price over the PS2's release price. I think the remote was included to raise the overall price while still keeping the console competitively priced. .

Nintendo had a target price, and they weren't going to miss it. They didn't remove DVD to avoid raising the price of the machine; they did it to change the difference between price and cost in their benefit. I believe the order of worst idea to best idea is as follows:

Plays DVDs: $300 -> Plays DVDs: $250 -> Doesn't play DVDs: $250

I think they either ruled out option number one first or didn't even consider it.

... You said crappy PS2 model.