Nintendo Wii pricing confirmed...

[Fetter]

@Itagaki

:word:
My one small gripe is that you’re most likely gonna have to pay for each individual retro-game that you download. It will only be a few bucks per game, but that can still add up depending on what you want to download.

Makes sense though, this is what will allow them to keep the system inexpensive.

:word:

The retro games are what makes me want one. I can’t wait until this thing hits. It’s worth it for a couple bucks a game.

EDIT

@wii.ign.com

June 7, 2006 - Nintendo president Satoru Iwata outlined a price range for some games on Wii’s Virtual Console download service during a marketing conference held in Japan on Wednesday. The company leader said that some Virtual Console games would cost between ¥500 and ¥1,000 yen, or $4.50 and $8.99 USD.

“We’d like people to play new, low-scale games for ¥500 yen or ¥1000 yen,” Iwata stated.

These prices apparently encapsulate only titles newly created for the Virtual Console. It is not yet clear if classic NES, S-NES and N64 games will fall under the same price range umbrella.

“We’d like to put an end to turning games into big titles – like taking simple game concepts, just adding modes and selling for 5800 yen,” Iwata said.

By comparison, Microsoft charges between 400 and 1,200 points ($5 to $12.50 USD) for Xbox Live Arcade games and lacks Nintendo’s acclaimed and robust library of classics.

Iwata also stated that load times for these Virtual Console games would be short and sweet. “It probably won’t be that this is the case for every game, but we’re bugging the development staff to make startup take three seconds,” the Nintendo president said. Nintendo has not yet revealed which games will be available on the Virtual Console, but such classics as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 64 and Sonic the Hedgehog were demoed at E3 2006.

Excitebike and Kid Icarus FTW!!