In August, several media outlets in India announced to the world that Nintendo’s Wii and DS were finally making their official appearance in India, on September 30. This has not happened, and we felt it was our duty to find out why.
In August, during the launch event of Spore held in Delhi by Electronic Arts India, Samurai Games India was present, sporting Nintendo DS T-Shirts. Now, the actual EA representative were wearing EA shirts and this seemed legit enough, especially considering the PR folks also hovered around them — even though they didn’t introduce them to anyone.
The duo from Samurai announced that they were working together with Nintendo to officially launch the Wii and DS in India. They added that the machines would be launched in India on September 30th.
Several concrete facts can now be re-affirmed about the Wii. Firstly, Tarun Bagadia of Zip Technologies (Greater Kailash 1) confirmed with us that the Wii is being marketed by HCL and costs Rs. 19,990. It comes with a warranty of one year. Even within several malls in Gurgaon you can find the Wii Fit selling for a whopping price of Rs. 10,000. The reason for this is apparently the conversion factor, and games are anywhere between Rs 1500 and 3500…
Setting the obvious rip-off of the financial transaction aside, Split-Screen also confirmed from several retailers selling the Wii in Delhi that the Wii is indeed imported, given its NTSC roots (the same system used in Japan) versus the predominately PAL- oriented regions of India.
Since the Spore launch event there has been no news from the company. Split-Screen needed to know if they actually launched the Wii or not and if they are officially in partnership with Nintendo. We learned that the “official” tag was a bit of a misnomer — Samurai merely deals with a Japanese distributor who supplies the consoles, and does not directly report to Nintendo, confirmed Toshinwal (who is based in Ajmer) over the phone.
Which makes complete sense — our information came only through several retailers selling the Wii in Delhi, and not from an Indian Nintendo spokesperson. Samurai representative Mahesh Toshniwal said the company had launched the Wii in 20 retail stores in Delhi to gauge the reaction of the gaming public.
What about the much talked about official launch then? Toshniwal said the official launch has been postponed until they could gather proper feedback from the market. The same market that includes only 20 retail stores. The very same market that spans only one city in the entire country. No, we can’t make sense of this move either. Even visiting their official website is useless, as you’re greeted with a giant “This Site is Under Construction”. Interestingly, their site launched at around the same time as media reports on their activities – complete with excerpts to fill the blanks that actual information they could have and should have provided.
Our initial skepticism was enough to fuel our curiousity but now it’s time to face the music and talk seriously: Is the Nintendo Wii officially being sold in India or not? Would we finally see our very own gaming market with several rival consoles competing with each other? Does Samurai India even know what it’s doing?
Toshniwal said he couldn’t comment upon Nintendo’s plans with regard to promotion and selling of the Wii in India. Nor was he able to provide us with much detail about Samurai’s plans (if they have any).
Well, at least we found the answer to one of our questions.
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