Wii Launches November 19 For $250

So the New York Times has spilled the beans a bit early, letting us all in on what Nintendo is set to make known to all later today. The Nintendo Wii will launch in North and South America on November 19, 2006 at a price of $250 USD. Even better? It will be the first launch console in quite some time to come with a bundled game. Wii Sports, which consists of bowling, baseball, golf, and tennis games will be free with the purchase of Wii. As for other games, we can expect about 30 old-school titles to be available at launch on Wii’s virtual console priced from $5-10 USD, and another 25-30 new Wii games to drop during the consoles launch window. New Wii titles will retail for $50 USD, $10 less than that of Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 games.

So there you have it folks - it appears that we will all be playing Wii before Thanksgiving. The question remains, though, after all the Blue Ocean stuff Nintendo has been feeding us, who is really excited about paying $250 USD for a picture viewer and weather station? Yeah, Nintendo also announced that Wii will be more than a game system - it will be a living room device that is able to display pictures, news, and weather information. How is that for a value-add? Nope, no DVD playback here folks. At least they threw in the Opera browser. Here’s to hoping that it’s at least fifteen times faster than the DS Opera browser.

The other bone we have to pick? Remember how, as recently as a year ago, Nintendo was saying how they absolutely, positively wouldn’t be the last console out of the gate this time? They weren’t going to let their competition get a leg up that way? Seems that’s also out the window as well.

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts.

Read More | Seattle Post-Intelligencer via Playfeed