14 DAY TRIAL // It's official, even if Nintendo is not interested in confirming it. Yet another add has been leaked from a major retailer showing that the Nintendo Wii is set to get a 50-dollar price cut at some point in the near future. The most recent evidence has been offered by Best Buy, as you can see from the admittedly rather blurry image attached to this article.
The price reduction had been rumored ever since the PlayStation 3 Slim was announced by Sony with a price tag of 299 dollars and Microsoft followed suit to cut the sales price of the Xbox 360 Elite. For two weeks now, various retailers have been preparing to advertise it.
Wal Mart, Toys R Us and Target are all listing the new price point to be of 199 dollars, making the Nintendo Wii the cheapest of the current-generation consoles, but it is not clear when the change will be coming into effect. The safest bet would be in early October, but Nintendo might make the move at the end of September, in order to make sure that it gives its home console a boost in the sales numbers, like those posted by the NPD Group.
A price reduction for the biggest selling console of the current generation is a very good piece of news for gamers and means that a lot more people will be playing video games in the near future. Unfortunately, Nintendo is not handling matters very well, playing up the secrecy angle and refusing to comment in any way, even as evidence is mounting. This will only mean that potential buyers will be keeping their money in their pockets for September, awaiting to see what happens next month.
If Nintendo had been more open about the price cut and had firmly announced when it was set to come, it would have experienced a short-term slump in sales, but video-game enthusiasts would have looked differently on the company.