Iwata Declares Revolution to Have Cheap Games and Storage

[nmaster64]

Iwata promised gamers last year that the Revolution would indeed be the cheapest of the next-gen consoles, with many developers saying they could almost sell it for $100 a system. But console price is far from the only thing on your receipt when you leave the game store. Games and accessories generally make for a much larger portion of the sales market and a gamer's spending than the system itself. Iwata recently sat down with CNN Money to discuss these financials.

Originally Posted by Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo

I cannot imagine any first party title could be priced for more than $50. In the US, we're going to see the next generation cost an awful lot. I really don't think that there's going to be a lot of acceptance by current customers of the $60 price tag. They may allow that for a limited number of premium titles, but not all.

But games aren't the only thing gamers are curious about. Many people have expressed concerns about the measley 512MB flash memory that the Revolution sports, the console not containing an actual hard drive. However, Iwata put those concerns to rest as well. So how could a gamer could fit the entire Nintendo library of downloadable games (which has expanded to SegaGenesis and TurboGrafX games as well) on their Revolution? Iwata pointed to the USB ports on the back of the system, saying "practically any storage method can be used." He continued...

Originally Posted by Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo

It's entirely possible that some downloads might not be permanent, either, making additional storage space less important. We can set some limitations as to the time period a piece of downloaded content can be played, or, we may opt to let users play as long as they want. This gives us a flexible business model.

If Nintendo does indeed allow for USB thumb drives and external hard drives on the Revolution, it could easily put Nintendo way ahead in the storage issue for next-gens. To compare, Microsoft currently sells 20GB Xbox 360 hard drives for $100. If you search the internet, you can find 200GB drives for less (I personally recently purchased a 200GB on sale at Staples for $40). Talk about cutting costs...

The full story/interview can be read here.

<3 Revo. This console war is already won...

<_<

[Neumie]

if the revo allows downloaded content to be stored on usb flash drives and any external harddrive that would be absolutely phenomanal. we know that you can get flash cards to expand the storage in the revolution, but if this is only one of many methods then wow.
great to see iwata saying that games are too expensive now. looks like nintendos games will be cheaper, though 3rd party publishers may decide to charge the same high price on all 3 systems :(.

[Yoshi]

I remember hey you pikachu! costed $80 cause of mic

[nmaster64]

I'm sure though with the emphasis of expansion the controller has, that they've made it much easier and much cheaper to make accessories. I expect most of the controller expansions to retail for like $9.99, $15 at the most. 'Cause when you think about it, the accessories before always had to be in themselves controllers, with the tech to communicate directly with the console. With an expansion slot in the Rev controller, it handles all that for the accessory, so it just needs to map it's control scheme to itself, and pass that into the Rev controller. This should make it a lot easier for 3rd parties to work with, which should cut costs. Dance pads and microphones and such will likely range from $10 to $20, versus around $30 that we see today...

I've heard a lot of people worry about having to buy tons of expansions for the Rev, but it's not that bad if each one is a third the price we pay today is it?