Directional Pad

Reggie confirms it: Wii in US - 19 NOV 2006, $250

At Nintendo of America's press conference today, unofficially dubbed "THURSDAYTON", Reggie confirmed everything we were told early thismorning. Sorta takes all the wind out of it when it was leaked 8 hrs before it got confirmed, right? But who cares? Confirmation is Confirmation.

Here's the essentials:

• US Release: 19 NOV 2006
• Price: $250
• Wii Sports is now a pack-in.
• Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is not delayed, like Gamespot had vaguely reported earlier. It will be available at launch.
• First-party games retail for $50, Third-party games might be more.
• Virtual Console Pricing: NES $5; SNES $8; N64 $10.
• Extra Wiimotes: $39.99; Extra Nunchuck attachments: $19.99
• Traditional Gamepad: $19.99

Quick note on that price: before you go running off to a forum to bitch and whine about it on the internet, look at this chart. Look at it. With all others adjusted for inflation, the Wii is the third cheapest console on the list. And it has a pack-in game, which none of those other three had at launch. You're getting a great deal, believe it.

Here's what we get:

• Wii Console
• Wiimote
• Wiimote Wrist Strap
• Nunchuck Adapter
• Wii Sports
• AV cables (Note: Not HD Component cables)
• Stand (The wedge thing that makes it sit at an angle)
• Sensor Bar
• AC Adapter
• 2 AA Batteries

Oh, hey, and how about some of this? Confirmed launch titles:

• Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii version at launch, GCN on 11 DEC 2006)
• Excite Truck
• Call of Duty 3
• Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Elebits
• Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz
• Madden 07
• Trauma Center: Under the Knife
• Need for Speed: Carbon
• Red Steel
• Metal Slug Anthology

Several Others, too. 30 games are slated for 2006, ~16 at launch. Sadly, Metroid Prime 3 has slipped to 2007. First online game is slated to be Pokemon Battle Revolution, which will be a Japanese launch title, and will be available here "shortly thereafter". Pretty safe to assume it'll be out in time for the holiday season.

As expected, Wii Sports is an actual game now, not just little tech demos like the ones we played at E3. It includes Baseball, Golf, Tennis, Bowling and Boxing. Yes, it seems like they just directly ripped all the best party games from Super Monkey Ball (save for Monkey Target), but I don't really care. I'm getting it free. I like free.

Here's a somewhat unexpected bit of news: it's only launching in white. We've seen it in several different colors, and those are still expected to be coming, but not at launch.

The Virtual Console purchasing works pretty much as expected, just like Xbox Live. You buy points, points buy games. Prepaid cards will be available for $20 that will get you 2000 points, so we've got a nice straightforward 1c -> 1p conversion rate. If this means we'll be able to get slightly cheaper points from Japan like with Xbox Live is still to be determined.

The Japanese Wii Site had some clips of people making avatars, apparently this is a "Mii" Channel of the Wii UI that lets you make an avatar for use online. Avatar data gets stored on the Wiimote, and gets used by assorted Wii games. So when you make your avatar, and then take your Wiimote over to your friends house, your avatar will show up in Wii Sports. So the Wiimote doubles as a memcard . . sorta?

While it's been out there, we haven't really talked much about the picture channel. Since the Wii has an SD card slot, they've made a Picture Channel that lets you browse through pictures on your SD card. Apart from a basic thumbnail gallery or slide show, there's also little bonuses like puzzles and on-image doodling.

Still other built-in UI stuff. There's a News channel (quite possibly based on RSS feed reading), a Weather channel (again, probably RSS) and a Message Center (Wii-mail?) that lets you send messages to other Wii Users, PC's, cellphones, etc. Nintendo certainly seems to be aiming to get a lot of mileage out of the Wii's built-in wireless NIC. Lets hope they actually let you use WPA Encryption this time, unlike the DS. Looks like the Wii's built-in version of Opera is going to cost points, but once you buy it it'll show up as just another channel.

This still leaves some questions unanswered, though. Why release it the weekend after the stateside PS3 release? They know when the PS3 is being released, why not beat Sony to market in all Regions? Why does Japan have to wait two weeks? Where's my goddamn OperaDS? How the hell am I supposed to split time between Twilight Princess, Guitar Hero 2, Elite Beat Agents, and everything else being released between now and the end of the year?

Well, now that we've got a date and price, retailers should have no problem accepting preorders. I know I'll be down at my local GameStop next Wednesday to pick up Okami and Rocket Slime, so I guess I'll put my cash down then.

Finally, if you'd like to see this press conference, Gamespot has a feed that'll be going live in a couple hours. One more press conference to go! Tomorrow at 0700 is the Nintendo of Europe press conference. The price in Europe is still seriously up in the air due to conversion rates and the fact that Europe tends to always get rather decently screwed when it comes to those things. Release date is also up in the air for Europe, but presently it looks like it'll be out the week of 11 DEC 2006.

Sources: The New York Times (Via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), USA Today, Go Nintendo.

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