Nintendo Wii Price Cut On The Way?

Now you won’t have any excuse not to grab a Wii, sports resort and play those love handles away.

Engadget is reporting that a trusted source has informed them that Nintendo’s little white console will be dropping $50, from $200 to $150 soon. They report that the date for the price drop will most likely be May 15th. The last universal price cut on the Wii was way back in September of 2009, when the price also dropped $50, from $250 to $200.

Popularity of the Wii console has diminished for the past few years. The drop-off has been steady, with the console selling over 10 million units in 2008, down to 9 million in 2009 and most recently 7 million in 2010. Most recently, Microsoft’s Xbox sales beat the Wii by nearly 100,000 units in February, according to CNET.

Last year, Nintendo partnered with the American Heart Association to promote healthy living through video-game-exercise. Their seal of approval appeared on Wii consoles, Wii Sports Resort, and Wii Fit. This writer ~~definitively links~~ does not want to correlate the declining Wii sales to the fact that Americans are fat and lazy.

Adding fuel to the rumor, GoNintendo has posted a leaked internal price sheet from Kmart that also has the new Wii price set at $149.99.

There are 4 Comments. Add Yours.

MrAndrewJ
April 13, 2011 at 2:24 pm

“This writer definitively links does not want to correlate the declining Wii sales to the fact that Americans are fat and lazy.”

My apologies to Chris Crum, who is a brilliant writer, and to Frank Reed who guest writes here. I’m tired of being called a fat, lazy, stupid ugly American Redneck by your site. I’m an inch from removing this dungheap from all my feed readers and I am unsubscribing from your newsletter. It was bad enough for you to allow it from outsiders in your comments. It’s worse getting it from your staff.

One final hit from the clue by four: The Wii is a family friendly console with low-end graphics. The competitors focus more on the lifestyle gamer and provide the high definition graphics those gamers demand. Further, Microsoft’s Kinect has been hugely successful and no doubt knocked a lot of wind out of the sails of the Wii’s once-unique motion controls. These are facts and trends – something marketers should be looking at rather than going into the attack against other human beings based on the happenstance of their birthplace.
- Josh Wolford
  April 13, 2011 at 2:49 pm
  
  Just a little joke, no offense intended.
- DrGAKMAN
  April 13, 2011 at 4:10 pm
  
  Asshat…sorry, reflex. The writer was joking about the fat-lazy-American bit, get over it.
  
  Kinect may be seen as a success, but MS spent A HALF BILLION DOLLARS marketting the tripe as some sort of Wii-killer. It won’t be a success until it makes back all the money MS spent on making & marketting it and MS (and outside Kinect game makers) make profits on it. But more likely, it’ll end up in bargain-bins in a few months…why? Because (like the Wii is currently seen) it has no worthwhile games. In the end, it’s all about the content, not the “casual vs hardcore” fairy tale or the “SD vs HD” myth.
  
  Instead of talking down to someone who’s doing his job while pretending to have the “real answer” as to why Wii sales aren’t what they once were, maybe you should see what’s really there and what really made the Wii a success, not the garbage that “the industry” (lolz waggle motion soccer mom casual lolz) feeds you. Games, son…learn!
SculptureOS
April 14, 2011 at 8:51 pm

Not surprising to hear the Wii taking a price-cut given its lackluster sales.

What’s more surprising to me is the pink 30gb Zune (that’s what it appears to be, based on the model # js8-00016) is being marked down from $249.99 to $9.99.

And just think, they’re probably still making a profit on that. Madness!