President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata believes it to be imperative for the company to release the Revolution before Thanksgiving in 2006. “We can’t disclose the Revolution’s release period yet, but we have no plans to miss out on the year-end sales battle. As for North America, we need to release it by Thanksgiving, or otherwise we won’t receive support from the retail industry. So the Revolution will be released prior to that period.”
Iwata also underlined his concerns that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are too expensive for the market to respond positively, repeating what he has said before that the Revolution will be a cheaper console. “The amount of money that people are willing to spend on videogames is getting less every year,” he said. “Even if it’s a superb machine, it’s not going to sell if it’s 50,000 yen ($434). We plan to make [the Revolution] an affordable price.”