I bought a used Wii tonight, and it came with pretty much everything I needed, but there were some bits I wanted to add/replace:
- Wii component video cable
- One remote was missing its wrist strap
- Two additional motion remotes and nunchucks/straps
So I headed out to Amazon to start pricing this stuff out, and I'll admit, I was shocked by what I found. It's almost like Nintendo's been reading Kirk McElhearn's continuing series on ridiculously expensive cables—and deciding that that's a wonderful business model to follow!
To show you just how ridiculous it is, I put together a pricing comparison for the parts I need…
Each cost entry in the table shows the total cost (qty * unit price) for each part; the links lead to each item on Amazon, so you can compare the customer reviews on the Nintendo and generic parts.
| Part | Qty | Nintendo | Generic | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Component cable | 1 | $49.95 | $6.82 | $46.86 |
| Wrist strap 1 | 4 | $9.16 | $4.70 | $6.86 |
| Motionplus Remote | 2 | $68.68 | $39.92 | $31.30 |
| Nunchuck 2 | 2 | $31.98 | --- | $31.98 |
| Totals | $159.77 | $51.44 | $108.33 | |
1 The generic part comes as a four-pack, so I showed four Nintendo straps, too. 2 The generic Motionplus Remote includes a nunchuck, so none need to be ordered. | ||||
I picked up the used Wii for all of $100 (with two Motionplus controllers, nunchucks, four games, all the cables, and a few controller accessories). If I were to use Nintendo-branded parts for the stuff I need to buy, I'd spend 150% of what I spent on the system! By comparison, the generics are just more than 50% of the system's cost. Still a bit expensive, but nothing compared to the cost of the Nintendo parts.
Pretty easy to figure out which column of the table I ordered from, right?