Screw new Wii U games. Nintendo is gonna give gamers in the United Kingdom what they need in the form of the Wii Mini.

The smaller, less-capable version of the original Wii will launch in the U.K. on March 22, according to Gamasutra. The hardware manufacturer will release the system in one color: black with a red border.

Nintendo cut the system’s online functionality, SD card slot, and GameCube functionality to get the price down for when the Wii Mini released in Canada for $99, but the company didn’t specify a price for the new hardware in the United Kingdom. A new Wii with Wii Sports costs £160.00 ($242) on Amazon.co.uk.

The console doesn’t come with a game, but Nintendo just added Wii Sports Resort and Mario Party 8, Mario Power Tennis, and Super Paper Mario to its price-reduced line-up of Nintendo Select titles.

Nintendo of America still hasn’t announced any plans to bring the Wii Mini to the United States.

Meanwhile, the Wii U’s only new game for the next three weeks is The Amazing Spider-Man: Ultimate Edition, due out March 3.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Doug Renert is a co-founding partner of Silicon Valley’s Tandem Capital.

Canada has many reasons to be proud.

For starters, the country has mostly dodged the economic crisis that continues to rattle the rest of North America. Canadian businesses enjoy lower corporate tax rates, plus plenty of government subsidy programs. Not to mention the fact that the populace enjoys universal healthcare coverage and the ability to travel without being labeled “loud Americans.”

However, when it comes to mobile apps, Canadians may not be so lucky.

The nation’s app store can be likened to the state of Nevada in 1951, when nuclear weapons testing sprouted a continuous stream of mushroom clouds throughout the flatland.

Canada’s role as the “guinea pig for mobile apps” was first brought to my attention when Peter Relan, CEO of Crowdstar, told me they always launched their apps in Canada first to work out the kinks and bugs before releasing in the U.S. and elsewhere. This approach makes perfect sense since Canadians resemble their southern neighbors so closely, though on average the “Canucks” may like beer and hockey a lot more and guns and frozen yogurt much less.

Doug Renert

With 10 percent of America’s population, Canada provides a risk-free test market.  Competitors and the media likely won’t get wind of failed launches or top performers in the mobile app stores of the Great (but relatively quiet) White North. And developers and marketers can tune apps to their hearts’ content until everything is primed for a successful launch in the “Promised Land” of red, white and blue.

This was the case for Bash Gaming (formerly BitRhymes), one of our portfolio companies that soft-launched its hit mobile social casino game Bingo Bash in the Canadian Apple App Store before hitting the U.S. They launched the game on each platform within Canada first, and only after several weeks of optimization for that market did they launch in the U.S. — where it eventually became a No. 1 grossing game.

That being said, this same strategy backfired on the Android side.

Bingo Bash had become such a hit on iOS that when the studio launched its Android version just a couple of months ago, word spread like wildfire. American Android users quickly caught wind of the leaked Canadian version — and cried foul! So Bash Gaming immediately made the Android launch effective worldwide.

Larger companies have been pursuing this tactic, as well. Nintendo recently launched its new Wii Mini on December 7 – for Canadians only. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before all this activity results in a rash of protests across Canada; a generation of activists shined a spotlight on Nevada decades ago and successfully won a ban on nuclear testing. Who will be the crusaders when it comes to Canada’s role as the world’s mobile guinea pig?

Or perhaps Canadians are darn proud of their role in the mobile app ecosystem as they involuntarily test-drive their way through buggy, early versions of every app imaginable. I, for one, am envious of this not-so-glorified breed of users who get first dibs on the fun games and cool apps that go on to become the top hits in the rest of the world.

Doug Renert is a co-founding partner of Tandem Capital, Silicon Valley’s first and largest mobile accelerator fund, currently at $32M. Tandem backs 12 early stage mobile startups each year with its brand of “muscle capital,” a powerful combination of funding and hands-on support. Some of Tandem’s biggest successes include PlayHaven and Bash Gaming, formerly known as BitRhymes. Prior to Tandem, Doug built businesses as an operating executive at Oracle and as CEO of telecommunications startup Tello.

photo credit: BFLV via photopin cc

Nintendo surprised the industry this week as it confirmed a leaked story that it would launch a stripped-down Wii mini game console for $99 in the Canadian market. The red console pictured above has the same core functionality as the Wii introduced in 2006, but it will be available on Dec. 7 for $30 less. What’s missing? The machine has no Internet capability and does not play older Nintendo GameCube games. It also has a slightly smaller footprint than the Wii.

We asked if Nintendo would launch the new Wii mini in other markets. But the company said only, “No information is available about its potential availability in other territories in the future.” The Wii mini plays 1,300-plus Wii games, but it isn’t being sold with a bundle. By contrast, the $130 (or, counting recent discounts, as low as $119) Wii sells with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort bundled. The question before us: What is Nintendo’s strategy? I’ve got my own opinions on the subject, and I gathered some from throughout the industry as well.

In the past, game industry wags have talked about the “magical $99 price.” Once a console drops to that price, mass market adoption can be huge. The PlayStation 2, one of the most popular consoles ever with more than 150 million units sold, hit its stride at $99. Nintendo’s history suggests that it sells its hardware for a profit. Nintendo has “no tolerance for selling hardware below cost,” said Jesse Sutton, CEO of Majesco. So it probably can’t cut the Wii’s price to $99 and still make a profit.

Still, hitting that $99 price will help the Wii match the price of its newest rival, the Android-based Ouya machine, coming out in the spring. Jeff Hilbert, managing partner at Digital Development Management (a game talent agency), says that part is “genius.” But Marco DeMiroz, CEO of mobile game maker PlayFirst, says that the $99 price is too high in the age of tablets and smartphones. This new machine just isn’t competitive with the experience you can get on subsidized mobile devices. He thinks it might work only if marketed outside the U.S. in emerging territories.

“It’s an appropriate price and offers a strong consumer value with a deep readily available software line-up,” said Jesse Divnich, vice president of insight and analysis at market researcher EEDAR. “The $99 price point shouldn’t be compared to the PlayStation 2, as most consumers viewed the PlayStation 2 as a DVD Player that also played games.  The Wii lacks a DVD playback function. The Wii mini won’t be a revival of the console, but instead targeting the extreme price sensitive consumer.”

In its glory years from 2006 to 2009, the motion-sensing Wii was so innovative and in such high demand that Nintendo didn’t have to think about cutting its introductory $250 price. Microsoft and Sony had more expensive machines, but the innovation in the Wii enabled it to race ahead and sell nearly 100 million consoles, compared to about 70 million each for the rivals. Sony has introduced cost-reduced versions of the PlayStation 3, and Nintendo is now taking a page from that book.

Of course, some of us wondered why Nintendo didn’t hit the $99 price earlier, with such an explosion of competition from the iPad, iPhone, and other new game platforms.

“Nintendo should have two years ago dropped the price on the Wii,” said Michael Zyda, head of the University of Southern California’s GamePipe Laboratory. “This is very late. Nintendo is on a path towards extinction.”

Loyd Case, a veteran journalist and hardware expert, wonders if there is a cost advantage to manufacturing the mini. It is smaller and uses less material, but the Wii components are made in such huge volumes that it might actually be more costly to start over and make some components in lower volumes, even if they are smaller. Blake Commagere, CEO of MediaSpike, said, “Not sure what the point of making it smaller is — it was already small, but it’s not like it’s any more portable now.”

“Removing Internet connectivity is a problem but Nintendo never had a good online strategy to begin with, so I don’t think it’s all that big of a deal,” said Anand Shimpi, head of the tech gadget site AnandTech. This is a cheap way of giving users access to Wii games, which is the whole point of a gaming console last I checked. It’s a great way to prop up sales of existing Wii titles.

Lastly, why launch in just Canada? It could be a test market. Or it could be the result of limited supplies. Or, as game veteran and DirectX co-creator Alex St. John says, maybe it is a test to figure out how much the Wii mini might cannibalize sales of the Wii U. If it does cannibalize sales, then Nintendo might shelve the Wii mini. If it doesn’t the Wii mini might get young kids started on the Nintendo life and eventually lead them to the newest console.

“I’d be inclined to call it a ‘gateway console for children,’ ” St. John said.

And veteran mobile developer Scott Foe says the mini is Nintendo’s message: “Wii are not dead yet.”

Nintendo created more questions than answers so far. But it’s fun to guess at what’s really happening. And it shows that those on the sidelines have no shortage of creative thinking.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Apparently oblivious to the jokes that initially surrounded the Wii’s name, Nintendo just announced the Wii Mini — a budget console that offers fewer features than the original Wii but is much cheaper.

The Wii Mini will sell for just $100 when it’s released in Canada on December 7. For some reason, Nintendo is keeping the console exclusive to the country for this holiday season, and it isn’t saying anything about availability elsewhere.

To make the Wii Mini so cheap, Nintendo had to chop out many features, like networking capabilities and compatibility with GameCube games. The Wii Mini will only be able to play Wii game discs (Nintendo says there are now more than 1,400 disc-based Wii games available). The console comes with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk controller, and it’ll offer all of the motion gaming capabilities the Wii is known for.

By stripping out extra features and focusing on a core experience, Nintendo is clearly aiming to extend the life of its existing Wii hardware. And given that the new Wii U console starts at $300, Nintendo may be able to tempt some budget buyers who somehow missed out on the original Wii with this smaller console.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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