According to a recent interview with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, a launch date and price will more than likely surface in or before September. Wii will be launched between October and December of this year as scheduled

“Some people somehow think that hardware always loses money,” said Iwata. “Nintendo is taking some distance away from that approach. If you ask me, ‘Will Wii be sold at or over the cost?’, I cannot tell today if we won’t lose even one yen by selling one Wii hardware. However, we do not intend to lose a great deal of money from the hardware sales. Any loss must be recovered elsewhere, of course.”

Interesting! Recovered elsewhere? Where? Games, franchise sales and online services of course.

Iwata also reassured that Wii is moving at a faster pace than the GameCube’s admitted failure to launch with a solid lineup. “To avoid repeating this with Wii, we have been intensifying the software development, both internally at Nintendo and at developers outside the company, in order to prepare aggressive software lineup for Wii at and after the launch.”

Speaking on the launch numbers for the Wii, Iwata said, “we announced that we are planning to ship 6 million Wii hardware during this fiscal year and, among them, we are intending to ship 4 million or more by the end of this calendar year, and we are preparing to make the productions.” In an interesting twist, Iwata added, “If we can ship this number and if no product shortage will be experienced anywhere in the world, it can be regarded as a failure for a new game machine’s launch. In other words, we will be making efforts to keep the constant shipment to the markets so that severe shortage situation will not go on for a long time.”

Finally, Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Mario and Zelda franchises, also announced a new franchise in development. “I am doing something lately, but I think I need to refrain from talking about it today. Hopefully, I can tell you what it is in 6 months or so.” Miyamoto has recently been known for taking at-home activities such as playing with his dog and gardening into new franchises, Nintendogs and Pikmin, respectively. Miyamoto noted his experiences as an at-home father with his new cat and lizard, “but these are not the decisive factors for me to think about next games.”

Maybe we should start to think creatively by introdusing pets into our living area soon.