Wii, the supposedly next-generation console from Nintendo promised that gaming would be made to reach out to a larger audience, by its sweet-sounding Wiimote(A motion-sensing controller), and its Virtual Games Console. By drowning Gamers and Consumers in a heavy dose of harmful Hype. Nintendo are getting ready a Game Console with all Hidden Costs, and also have started to lie about it. Reasons: 1. At E3, Nintendo Promised that there would be DVD Playback possible through a accessory which would be released along with the Wii. Fast Forward to Today, Nintendo claims that they had dropped the plans to release any sort of accessory to enable DVD Playback. Why? Because Nintendo had to pay a licensing fee to include DVD playback. They did not want to lose any profit on the Wii, so they simply dropped the idea. 2. Region-Locked : Nintendo of America's Vice President of Marketing & Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan stated at the September 14 press event in New York that Wii will be able to play games from other regions unrestricted, and implied that there may be an option for publishers to enable regional lockouts. According to later report by IGN, Nintendo UK General Manager David Yarnton confirmed at the September 14 press event in London that Wii games and online content will be region-coded, seemingly contradicting the earlier statements by Kaplan. It is yet to be clarified exactly by Nintendo if every Wii will be region coded everywhere or just Europe. This would mean the US and Japan being under the same region code and European games being separate. Ludwig Kietzmann of Joystiq, a video game blog, reported late on September 15 that they had spoken to "a Nintendo US spokesperson" who stated, "We've heard conflicting reports from lots of folks out there, but can tell you that Wii will be region encoded, as will first-party software. Don't expect to play great import games, Japanese-only RPGs and other Japanese Games on the Wii as they are region-locked. By this incident, Nintendo themselves have confirmed that they are liars. 3. Hardware : Wii, is not even close to the next-generation of Gaming. Check out its Hardware Specifications, IBM PowerPC processor codenamed "Broadway" which is actually a Apple Power PC G3 processor clocked at 729 MHz. ‘HollyWood’ GPU is clocked at 243MHZ, the internal memory of it includes 3mb of embedded graphics memory and 24megabytes of high speed main memory. 64megabytes of GDDR3 (MEM2) as the external main memory. Just like the internal memory, it can be accessed from the CPU and GPU with a maximum bandwidth of 4gbytes/sec and can also store programs in the MEM2. The GPU of the Wii is identical to the GC’s but it is on average 1.5X faster. At E3, We had rumours that Wii's were actually just improved GameCube's. The hardware specs prove that it is really true. 4. Price : US$250 is not a price to buy an intermediate generation console. It contains the Wii Sports bundled in it, but there are reports that the games present inside are actually brief technical demos with little game play and customisable avatars. And US$60 for all 3rd party software is outrageous, even PS3's Blu-ray games are priced at US$60. But, 1st Party games would be at US$50. 5. 3rd Party Denial : All these are not enough to be your average Nintendo Corporation. Nintendo has denied all 3rd Party developers to use the upcoming WiiConnect24 service during the launch. 6. Games : Most of the games coming out for the Wii are actually old games slated for release on the GameCube, those projects were scrapped when the Wii was announced. The 3rd Party Developer Story is another thing. 7. Controller : The much hyped Wii-mote, is not something new. Remember Gametrak, the controller for Xbox and PS2, the games used motion sensing technology but were not fully supported by the hardware. It also copies some of the features from the announced Seaman 2 game controller for the PS2. The Controllers cost US$39.99, and the Nunchuk add-on(which is necessary for many games) costs around US$19.99, forgot to mention that Classic Controllers(Which are necessary for playing Virtual console games) cost around US$19.99, the total Controllers cost around US$60 per piece, thus ripping off the customers from having the 'so-called' family experience. Every family has to have around 4 members at least, So US$60 x 3 = US$180 + US$20 = US$200. Total Price, US$250 + US$200 = US$450. Therefore you actually end-up paying US$ 450 per console for the so-called 'Family Experience', for a console of Wii's standards. Nintendo is ripping off every customer without even the customer's knowledge. The Wii would actually cost around US$150-170, to produce in mass scale as it needs no licenses, and maximum resolution is at 480p. Believe me, Wii is not truly next-gen. The Wii is not too bad, actually it is a Great Console which is let down by its price tag and its Hidden Costs. Nintendo are beginning to get too greedy, while Sony and Microsoft lose money on each console sold. The Bottom line: Nintendo are trying to trick customers into buying the Console and controllers, remotes at US$450, without even including the costs of the games. Even the Games are too expensive, a new Xbox 360 title retails at US$60, PS3's BD Games are expected to cost around US$60.(According to Activision). Nintendo are simply, getting too greedy and trying to rip gamers off.