Toys R Us Conference: Wii will be $299

By George Walker | August 28, 2006

Last week, all of the Toys R Us “store directors” had a conference in Orlando, FL. One day of the conference is devoted to “vendor day” where various toy and video game vendors show off their crap, ostensibly to get all of the store managers hyped up to focus on selling their products.

It just so happens that I am on very good terms with the local Toys R Us store director, and he filled me on some of the things he saw and heard. (I will not share his name or location. He did not sign any kind of NDA, but I still wouldn’t want him to get in trouble.)

First of all, my source was told that the price for the Wii in the U.S. will be $299. He was also told that all of this information is preliminary and does not necessarily reflect the finalized pricepoint.

It was also related to me that the Wii is bleeding hot! Excite Truck and Wii Tennis were both demoed, and my source felt like the controls were very well tuned, although difficult to master at first. And yes, these games were running off actual Wii hardware. It looks like the Wii is ready to go!

Sony also had some… demos… however, there was no hardware, no controller, and no actual gameplay. Everything that was shown were game trailers which did display some gameplay, but nothing running on actual PS3 hardware. So, here we are about 2 months from release day, and Sony STILL DOES NOT HAVE ACTUAL HARDWARE. Also, Sony is really driving to these managers that the major PS3 selling point is getting a cheap Blu-ray player. I’m not exactly sure why people would want to buy Blu-ray players at Toys R Us… but there you go.

“Microsoft didn’t show anything spectacular.” However, my source admitted to being partial to Sony and Playstation in the past, so he wasn’t super excited about Microsoft’s offerings.

So, to summarize: Wii for $299, Still no Sony hardware, More of the same from Microsoft. And the Wii (not surprisingly) definitely generated the most buzz and excitement.