Wii: Back Catalog Pricing
For a company that is often downright bizarre, Nintendo is red-hot right now. There's an article over at Anandtech on the pricing structure for downloadable games from Nintendo's back catalog, which was a huge feature when it was first announced. Funny thing, though. Once we all saw how cool the freaking controller was, talk about the retro games slacked off.Here's the excerpt:
Nintendo President Saturo Iwata spoke yesterday at a Japanese marketing event (Japanese source), revealing information about "virtual console" pricing and the Wii's relationship with the DS. Iwata revealed that games for Nintendo's "virtual console" that will allow Wii owners to play old titles on their consoles will be priced at ¥500 and ¥1,000, roughly US$4.50 to US$8.99.
Another great decision by Nintendo. They could have easily sold downloads of their back catalog for $19.95, but I bet they get 5x the volume at the lower price point. It's going to sell systems, and some people will download the entire back catalog, just so they can say that they have it.
What Nintendo should do now is tie in some kind of gamer achievement system to their retro games. People would pay to download games they'd beaten ten years ago and play them again just to raise their gamer score. Have a contest where people get free gear if they get to XYZ points on their retro gamer score and send them a nice t-shirt with "Retro Gaming Master" on it or something. People would spend a hundred dollars downloading games just to get a ten dollar t-shirt and a special tag on their online I.D.
The full Anandtech article is here.
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