Long-overdue price cut may be coming for the Nintendo Wii

A $50 price cut may be coming at the end of September for the Nintendo Wii.

A Toys ‘R Us ad shows that the $249 Nintendo game console will begin selling soon at $199, according to the game news site Kotaku.

The price cut makes sense since sales of the Wii have slowed this year and both Microsoft and Sony recently cut their game console prices by $100. The Wii is still in first place in terms of popularity, with more than 50 million consoles sold worldwide. But Nintendo has been milking the Wii’s success a little too much. It hasn’t changed the hardware price since the Wii launched in 2006.

Nintendo is generating a lot of profits as a result, but the company has only managed to hang on to its market share because its Wii controller is so innovative and it started out at a much lower price than its rivals.

Microsoft’s low-end console, the Xbox 360 Arcade, sells for $199 but it doesn’t have a hard disk like the 120-gigabyte Xbox 360 Elite version at $299. Sony’s latest PlayStation 3, dubbed the PS 3 Slim, has a 120-gigabyte hard disk and sells for $299. A 160-gigabyte version sells for $399.

If you’re in the market for a console, check out our comparison story from a couple of weeks ago.

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