Miyamoto Wanted Wii to Cost $100
A new interview with legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto (right) has revealed that he initially wanted Nintendo's next console to cost just $100. The gaming icon also stressed the importance of moms as it related to the design approach for the Wii.
At $249 the Wii already has a nice price advantage against the competition, and there's little doubt that the console will sell out this holiday season, but can you imagine what sales would be like long term if the Wii had been priced at $100? According to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, the goal at the beginning actually was to make a machine that would be in that price range.
Speaking to BusinessWeek, when he was asked if it was the plan all along to make a console for under $250, the legendary Mario and Zelda creator said, "Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded. To answer your questions, yes, we set out to design a console that would sell for less than 25,000 yen ($211). It was a tall hurdle. But unless you start off with a target, you can't control costs and you'll inevitably lose money. Also, we thought a low-cost console would make moms happy."
Apparently making moms happy was a theme throughout the interview. "Ultimately, it came down to whether power should be a key element of the console or not. We didn't think it was possible to build a powerful machine for less than 50,000 yen ($450). Not only would it use a lot of electricity, it would need a fan, which meant it would be noisy. Moms would rise up against it," Miyamoto said. "Plus, it would take too long to boot up, like a PC, which isn't an ideal toy."
Later in the interview Miyamoto and veteran designer Ken'ichiro Ashida also talked about some of the design influences on the Wii. As it turns out, at one point Nintendo had been inspired by cell phones and had designed a controller prototype that resembled one. An even bigger influence was Nintendo's own DS handheld. "The DS had a huge impact on the Wii's design," explained Ashida. "We had the DS on our minds as we worked on the Wii. We thought about copying the DS's touch-panel interface and even came up with a prototype. But then we rejected the idea, since the portable console and the living-room console would have been exactly the same."
When Nintendo had finally settled on a controller, it took some hard work to finally bring the new design to fruition. Apparently the wireless technology alone took two years to perfect. The infrared pointer was also a challenge. "Getting the infrared pointer to work took more than a year. It worked just fine in the ideal environment. But bright lights and sunlight interfered with its accuracy. And we had to test it in rooms of all sizes. The final version wasn't finished until this summer," said Miyamoto. "We also had reservations about adding a sensor bar to boost the pointer's precision, since we wanted to make the setup as simple as possible. Combining the different technologies to mimic 3D space recognition took time. By the end of 2005, it was ready for mass production. But we were making adjustments up to the last minute."
Linear Mode
