With all these rumors circulating around about the WiiU launching at a $299.99 price tag, it had me thinking about just how much we are overpaying for consoles at this point in their life cycle. Let’s look at the new Star Wars 360 that just launched, it’s downright ridiculous that anyone should be pricing 6 year old hardware at $449.99 retail. I know, I know, it comes with a Kinect and I know it comes with a new mediocre Star Wars game. Oh and let’s not forget the shiny paint job and gold controller. I get it, it’s a Star Wars Collector thing but even so to charge or even pay that much is insane.
Think about it this way, let’s say you bought a PC 6 years ago and that PC cost you $700. Now fast forward and buy that same PC 6 years later and you might be looking at $250 maybe less, I’m just ballparking a 64% price drop. Judging by this figure comparatively, the PS3 should only be around $216 dollars, the 360 should be around $144 with a hard drive included and the Wii, well Nintendo should just be handing those out to anybody that walks through their front doors. Nintendo is the worse company for price gouging.
Think back only 1 generation ago with the Gamecube launching at $199.99, back then it was a top of the line system just being a little out powered by the original Xbox. Now by the end of this generation the Gamecube’s final price drop was to $99.99. Then here comes the Wii which is just slightly more powerful then a Gamecube launching at $249.99. “Wait your telling me that we are paying $249.99 for what is practically a Gamecube wrapped in a different box with an added motion controller?” That’s exactly what I’m telling you and Nintendo sold millions of them. Well since it worked once why not go for it again with the WiiU. Take a system that is slightly more powerful then a PS3 add a new tablet controller and charge $300 for it. Will history repeat itself, Nintendo better hope so.
The last thing I have to add is about the handheld systems. I didn’t want the poor 3DS and Vita to feel left out. Let’s start off with the kings of the handheld market, Nintendo. Nintendo launched their 3DS system at the outlandish price of $249.99. Now if I know anything the handheld market, at least here in America is mostly dominated by kids. I would even go as far as to say it’s an 80% kids to 20% adults that play handheld systems. The 3DS sold well at first and then the sales died down. So what does Nintendo do they drop the price to $169.99 and just so they don’t piss off the early adopters they make everybody that bought the system at $249.99 into “Nintendo Ambassadors” and give them 20 free games. Now what are those 20 free games, 10 NES classics and 10 GBA games. I personally would rather Nintendo keep those 20 downloadable games that didn’t cost them a single thing to give to the consumer and given everybody a choice between Super Mario 3d or Mario Kart 7. Well beggars can’t be choosy and it’s nice of them to do anything at all but it’s not like they went out of their way.
Then you have the PS Vita, which is an absolute mind blow to me. A non backwards compatible system launching at the same price that your biggest competitor just failed at. Now I don’t have a business degree but if you see your competition (that has lead the handheld market for the last 23 years) start lowering it’s price because of slow sales why the hell would you launch for the same price and higher. Sony thinks that just because they bring a new system to the public it will sell no matter what. Remember this quote about the PS3 “We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn’t have games.” Tell that to the 10,000 people that just got laid off at SONY, I know they said it was because of their slow TV sales but I wouldn’t be surprised if the slow sales of the Vita had something to do with it as well. You know some companies just never learn.
Ryno’s Done!
*In no way does my opinion reflect the rest of the staff at GameGravy or it’s affiliates*
