A Brave New World, 20 years ago.

I am on my 25^th hour of Smash Brothers Brawl. The really scary part now is not the content, which is egregious in its effects on my time management. The producer says this will be the final one, but we all know that’s shenanigans. But what on earth could they put in the next generation, a fully HD release? I shudder to think what Nintendo could fit on a Blu Ray disc… mere sunlight may not be a sufficient alternative.

Now the Wii has a problem, and that problem is pricing. The 360 and the PS3 have this to a lesser extent, but the greatest problem is that anything outside of a highly marketed game doesn’t do too well in this day and age. The Wii’s numbers are … mixed.

The success of the Virtual Arcade, Xbox Live Arcade, and the Playstation 2 Greatest Hits packages shows that value can be drawn from nostalgia, but value also arises from value. Games that couldn’t sell well at full regular price are marked down. And this is what the Wii shall do. We all know that Zack and Wiki (and I know what I’m getting into) won’t sell as many copies as Metroid Prime 3, so why not sell it at a lower cost?

Well, they did, and it still didn’t do so hot. But at the lower price, you can bet they moved more copies than they would if the MSRP was 50. And in the interest of the gaming companies, they may have to re-examine some of their figures. Most games on the systems that are less anticipated or hyped could be offered at a lower price. Said console company raises their certification and licensing marginally to offset any loss, and the manufacturers get a bigger piece of cake by way of gross sales.

Some would say this is already happening with the Wii, that many “lower” titles take up shelf space. This is true, but the quality there is lacking. The difference may be that we need to show companies a greater potential in margin. It makes no mistake that nominal budgeting for a girl’s horse game will make a return even on the largely mistaken customers.

It is important to remember Atari at this moment, and it’s also important to remember the Game Boy. The Game Boy has games that are Classics with a capital C, but it also has shit that you couldn’t give away. It didn’t destroy the gaming business. On the contrary, it grew by leaps and bounds, and preserved a handheld monopoly where competition is only a recent phenomenon. The Wii model isn’t broken; it’s been used for years to the tune of tidier profit than any competitor.

Independent developers will find themselves drawn to the relative cost-effectiveness on the Wii, and big time players may find themselves allocating more resources. What’s working against Nintendo is that production costs (unless your name is Squenix) is going down as companies learn the ins and outs of the high definition consoles.

So the solution? A much lower price point on capital games. Give away a Mega Man, practically. Show that a top tier game can be bnought at the Wii (and ensure a lower MSRP to make it tempting) and you’ll see the difference. No More Heroes, for example, is not a fifty dollar game. But a 25 dollar game? I’d wager even Japan could say yes to that. The notion that all games need to be priced at identical prices has been obliterated by PC gaming and years of remixes and reissues. The future isn’t microtransactions, it’s in selling small in volume. It’s hard for many to remember, but what really touched off the RPG video game genre on the NES wasn’t Final Fantasy, but it was the inclusion of a failure of a game (Dragon Quest nee Warrior) that was given away free with a marketing tool. It worked, sales improved, and Americans have enjoyed RPG’s of a similar texture (if not series) for the better part of twenty years. It wasn’t that the game was a hit, it was that it was affordable, acceptable, and paved a path for bigger, prettier things to come. I think a similar model could work with the Wii. It’s only up for someone to try…