No Price Drop for Wii Surprises No One

Confirming what many had already assumed, Nintendo senior marketing VP George Harrison told Reuters the company's Wii console will remain at its $249.99 price point for some time. "We'll stay at $249 for the foreseeable future. We are still selling everything we can make," Harrison told Reuters. "We think we're in a great position. Both our competitors took price reductions and it hasn't stalled our momentum at all." Microsoft's Xbox 360 just had its first price cut earlier this year, nearly two years after its launch. Competitor Sony has been mainly shuffling prices for its SKUs less than a year after the PlayStation 3's release, with the most recent coming in the form of a stripped down baseline package that leaves out backward compatibility, currently announced for Europe and Australia. With the Wii's incredible performance at retail combined with its relatively low price point, it's extremely unlikely Nintendo would issue any sort of pricing cuts before even the next holiday season. The company expects to produce 16.5 million Wii units worldwide in the coming fiscal year, which likely won't meet the demand for the console.