Sunday, July 09, 2006

Wii launching really early... or really late?



Here´s an interesting question: Who do you trust more? CNN Money or the Daily Telegraph? Both media claim to have inside information on the Wii´s launch date. British newspaper The Daily Telegraph writes:

Two dozen games will be available when the machine is launched in Britain at the end of November.

Now, end of November is later than most punters expected. Meanwhile, CNN Money claims that the Wii will actually launch much earlier than experts predicted. They write:

Industry observers - and insiders - say they expect the system to be available in October, with late September a dark horse candidate.

Now, while CNN actually goes into more detail about console production and even cites a reputable industry analyst, Nintendo denied that they had moved the launch to September. The third quarter was out of the question, a spokesman told Bloomberg:

"There's no change in our plan to release the console in the last quarter of this year," Yasuhiro Minagawa, a spokesman for the Kyoto-based company, said in a telephone interview today. "We are planning an announcement in September and it may be causing some confusion."


As much as I would like to believe CNN Money, Iwata painted a very different picture at the E3. In my interview, he told me that they will happily push back the launch until they have a sufficient software portfolio to support the launch of the hardware. This is a lesson most likely learned from the GameCube´s launch. Also, Nintendo really believes to be in no competition to Sony, both with regard to reaching a new audience and with regard to their completely different pricing strategy. So I believe that the Wii will launch no earlier than November.

That comment about the launch announcement causing confusion is just too cryptic for my liking. I am ready to be surprised, even confused by a last hardware secret. But how a launch date announcement could be confusing is beyond me. Even if they scheduled a press conference and told everyone the console would launch the next day (much like Apple launch their products) this would not be confusing to people. The only launch statement that would be confusing would be to announce more than one date or, even, announce that the console had already launched. While that´s confusing, it doesn´t make much sense. So I´m back to square one.

Sources: The Daily Telegraph, CNN Money
Thanks to: Nintendogal, GoNintendo

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool my post is the first !

Honestly i have nothing to say : )

Peace

Anonymous said...

I think Nintendo mean that there is confusion now among journalists because they stated they will announce the launch date in september, not that what will be announced in september will confuse people.

Unknown said...

Falafelkid.. you are forgetting that CNN Money was talking about the US launch and Daily Telegraph is talking about a UK launch!

It could come out in late October in the US and still be out in late November in the UK.. But in my opinion first week of November sounds more likely

Anonymous said...

I really don't think that they would want to release in November, if they are still going with the plan of releasing it before the PS3. Releasing it in November gives them precious little time to keep the engine running smooth and hot before the release of the behemoth Playstation 3.

Oh, and I also thought this might be humorous: The 20GB version of the PS3 has NO WIRELESS support, and NO HD OUTPUT. Additionally, the 20GB version also has no type of memory card reader, which the 60GB version has wireless, HD output and a SD card/Memory Stick/CompactFlash reader inside of it.

It's on the Playstation 3 website if you'd like to check for yourself. I believe that the 20GB version is going to be much like the Core System for the XBox360: very, very useless.

Anonymous said...

http://gonintendo.com/wp-cont
ent/photos/ranurabasewii9pz.jpg


http://gonintendo.com/?p=3600

Anonymous said...

I suspect that priyesh is correct, although I think early November is more likely simply because I think that they will try to beat PS3 out the door if possible.

-fyter