14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has dropped some more hints about a price cut for the company's Wii home console in order to extend its lifecycle.
The Nintendo Wii, while achieving huge sales since its release, is seeing its market share drop these days, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are growing constantly.
As such, plenty of people are demanding a price cut for the Japanese console, while others are waiting for a Wii 2 announcement.
Now, Reggie Fils-Aime, the Nintendo of America president, has revealed that the Wii still has a long life ahead of it, and that the Japanese company does have a variety of tools through which it can make the console even more attractive.
"The Wii has a long life in front of it," Fils-Aime told Gamasutra. "We're still sitting at $199. There are a variety of marketing tools at our disposal."
As you can imagine, one of the most important tools is a price cut, which would seriously undermine the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, currently sitting at $250 and $200 dollars, respectively.
The idea of a successor is still far away, as an older statement from Fils-Aime said that the console needed to sell around 10 to 15 million more units before Nintendo could consider the possibility of a Wii 2 or Wii HD.
Analysts and game publishers like Electronic Arts beg to differ, as they await a new Wii announcement at this summer's E3 conference, seeing as how the Wii is still on par with the PlayStation 2 in terms of graphics and hardware.
Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata revealed that the company would make a decision about a new console when game developers have run out of inventive ideas for the current system.
Until then, the Japanese company is focusing its efforts on the successful launch of the Nintendo 3DS, which will be arriving in Europe on March 25, and in North America on March 27.