It's amazing how a room full of suits and PowerPoint presentations can excite people the world over - Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has announced that Wii's launch date will be revealed in September, and you can expect a final price-point to be named around the same time. The news came during Nintendo's Management Policy Briefing in Japan today.
Iwata also mentioned that Virtual Console downloads (comprised of classic NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 games - see a story from February on ithere) would cost around $4 to $8, though he didn't specify if that was a flat price or just the lowest possible. We'd guess the significantly larger N64 titles would cost a bit more, with Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx games falling somewhere in the middle.
At the meeting, Nintendo also announced a new Wii Pokemon game: Pokemon Battle Revolution. Similar to the Pokemon Colosseum games on N64 and GameCube, it will allow you to battle your pokemon in full 3D.
Finally, Iwata has also stated that Nintendo's Wii launch will not be a financial kick in the pants, especially if six million units are sold worldwide by April 2007, which is the current plan. This would be in sharp contrast to both Sony and Microsoft's next-gen hardware launches, which are costing a pretty penny to maintain - Sony's already predicting an $884 million loss during the PS3 launch.
June 7, 2006
