Over the last few months, the news that Nintendo was releasing a successor to it’s wildly popular Wii gaming system has been everywhere. Virtually every gamer on the planet has been waiting with baited breath to find out when and where.
Finally, those gamers can let out a sigh of relief. The Nintendo Wii Part II will be released in 2012.
The news came from Nintendo today and confirmed what many gamers already knew, as it was not exactly a huge secret. The company said in their release that the first Wii had over 86 million systems sold in the five years it has been on the market. Those kind of numbers make a follow-up a bit of a no-brainer.
What was unclear among gamers was the actually when they could look forward to buying the game system. Many thought it would come out in 2011 sometime, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Could there be a sprint made by Nintendo to get the systems into stores by the 2011 Christmas season? It is entirely possible, but not likely.
Prices on the Nintendo Wii Part II are rumored to be around $400, but even that is not etched in stone. The games are going to likely be very expensive, but it would be hard to imagine them being any higher than that. Would gamers pay more? They probably would.
The Christmas season would be a bit of a coup for the Nintendo company if they could get enough consoles ready, and have the games in place to support such a launch. With reports saying that X-box and Playstation 3 will be out of the new system market until 2014, Nintendo is poised to take over the holiday season with no competition. The blessing could end up being a curse as well though if they do not play their cards right.
If Nintendo decides to push the dates up to take advantage of this situation, they had best have the consoles produced to do it. The first year the Nintendo Wii hit, the holiday season was a mess as people could not find them at all. And that was with plenty of competition. Imagine how bad that would be if Nintendo was the only gaming system in town that was new for the holiday season.
Another issue is games. It takes time to develop the games needed to justify someone buying a $400 gaming console. While they may have plenty of games waiting in the wings, it takes successful advertising and preparation to push new titles on a buying public, particularly when they are for a new system. Nobody is going to want to buy a console based on future promises of coming games. They want their games right away.
For these reasons I would think Nintendo will wait until their projected date of 2012 to release the Nintendo Wii Part II, in spite of the tempting holiday profits. The potential risks far outweigh the rewards unless Nintendo has built up consoles and game technology behind the scenes. Even if they have, they’ll still need time to advertise and market it effectively. If not, they had best get ready for the storm that is holiday gamers.
About the author: Rodney Southern is a regular contributor of HungryScholar, publishing a variety of technology news articles.