Wii – Page 31 – StuffWeLike

$17+ million: The price of customer service

DS prints money

Remember earlier we mentioned that you could do yourself a favor and pick up some free stuff from Nintendo? No, not the Mario shoes! Those cost $120 a pair.

That’s right, as the law of economics states, TINSTAAFL, which is the actual abbreviation for “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” That means if something is really, truly, honestly free, you are either getting scammed or something else is going on.

Lo and behold Nintendo is paying a small fortune for making sure us wacky customers don’t accidentally break more SDTV’s and Wii Remotes. It’s not as expensive as a certain $1 billion investment, but at least we know Nintendo can handle their money issues well.

Save TV’s, get free stuff; thanks Nintendo!

The original wrist straps weren’t enough. They snapped when people playing tennis swung as hard as they could. Things were broken. Pain of the mind and wallet ensued.

Nintendo gave us all free wrist straps that had a stronger noose attaching it to the Wii so those amazingly powerful human beings attempted to use heavy, shocking motion instead of light gestures. The extra thickness of the noose was good enough.

Not good enough for Nintendo though. In an effort to spend some of their unlimited funds, they are giving away another way to help protect ourselves from those careless individuals who refuse to put those wrist straps on yet are too weak to really do too much damage on their own.

The orders go out today, but their store is down at the moment, so get some post its and cover half your monitor with them so you don’t forget to do it today. They’ll ship out on the 15th.

Free Wii Remote Jacket

Dog swallows Wiimote, Sony not involved (as of now)

The Becknell family from Loveland, CO was leading a normal day when suddenly their 3 year old Labrador Retriever started vomiting blood. A visit to the friendly vet showed that there was a freaking remote inside the dog’s belly. But the Becknells made the mistake of thinking it was just another ordinary remote. Turns out that there was also a Wiimote. That might also explain the many bugs the family faced when they turned on their regular copy of Wii Sports, and how the dog was able to mentally win every tennis match.

The dog had chewed the old family remote “into little pieces and that wasn’t the mass in the X-ray.” Eventually, the Wiimote surfaced. As you can expect, the parents got angry, the vet got money, the dog breathed a sigh of relief (and despairs at having lost his cheat) and the kid got blamed. The poor kid has lost two weeks’ worth allowance to pay for a new remote.

When contacted, the dog denied any connection with Sony. Sony representatives threw rocks at us when we tried to contact them. I think there’s no corporate politics involved here.

[Via Fun Tech Talk]

Force Unleashed for Wii in 2008!

We brought you news last week that the famed lightsaber-swinging Star Wars Wii game will not be the next installation of Lego Star Wars. This left us wondering as to what LucasArts has up its sleeves. Well, it turns out that one of my predictions went right – LucasArts is porting Force Unleashed to the Wii, and the package will be released in Spring 2008!

I can immediately see the game get massive sales for the Wii, because you WILL get to control the lightsaber with your Wiimote and use force powers with the nunchuck. How friggin’ cool is that? Plus, the game will include a Wii-exclusive duel mode, which allows you and your equally geeky buddy to fight with lightsabers ‘fer rel’! This is certainly something Star Wars fans have anticipated for a long, long time.

“Wii is a great platform for The Force Unleashed, because the console’s motion-oriented controllers really bring the game to life,” said Jim Ward, the president of LucasArts. “We’ve worked hard to make the Wii version of the game unique in order to truly let you unleash the Force.”

Holy hell yeah!

Wii Price Cut

Wii

When will Nintendo lower the price on the Wii? If you think it’ll be this holiday season, you’re probably wrong. I’d say Spring ’08/Summer ’08. Here’s why:

Nintendo has yet to steadily replenish its Wii unit supply. Why would Nintendo want to lower the price of a system that’s still sold out? There wouldn’t be any advantage to doing it.

This holiday season Nintendo needs to focus in on the games. It needs to tell gamers that while the Xbox 360 may have Halo 3 and the PS3 has Heavenly Sword – The Wii has Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros Brawl. Mario has always been a million unit seller series and last generation’s Smash Bros title gave the Gamecube its most wide appealing game. Nintendo cannot afford to draw attention from these two AAA title releases.

Thirdly it’s highly likely that Sony will lower the price of the PS3 either by this holiday season or early next year. In the race of console supremacy, the PS3 is in dead last. Sony needs to throw as many cards as it has to grab gamer’s attentions before the gap between the Wii and Xbox 360 sales gets seriously out of control.

In order to continue to appeal to a wider consumer audience, Nintendo will have to lower the price of the Wii console. Keeping the above factors in mind, Nintendo will most likely wait till next year to take the plunge. Most likely the price drop will only be a $50 price reduction. Hopefully Nintendo will continue to bundle Wii Sports even after the price drop. Wii Sports has been the reason why many casual gamers have been so interested in the Wii with its unique gaming style. To eliminate this free bundled title might actually hurt Nintendo in the short run.

Nintendo Is King

For the first time since the SNES, Nintendo is now dominating the console wars. According to The Financial Times, Nintendo has surpassed Microsoft as the top selling next-generation console. The sad thing for Microsoft is that the Wii has been on the market for less than 1 year unlike the Xbox 360! Analists attribute the Wii dominance due to it’s low cost and broad gamer appeal. The Wii surpassed the PS3 worldwide sales since July 2007.

It’ll be interesting to see how long Nintendo can hold the #1 spot, especially with the imminate launch of Halo 3. The question that is on every analyst’s mind is, have all the Halo fans already purchased a Xbox 360? If they have, the Xbox 360 might be #2 for potentially the rest of the console cycle.

Mario