Topic: Wii U Pricing

It should be:
Wii U- £180 -£210
Games - £39.99

But it'll be:
Wii U - £250 -£300
Games - £49.99

LMAO! Well said

being a brit i'm more inclined to speculate on the UK pricing. although nintendo doesn't set a RRP as such for Europe any more....

absolute low point - £200 no game....this is the price Amazon had it for a while back. I placed a pre-order straight away and these were all cancelled the day after. this is a price i'm definitely in at and would not need to be lowered for a long time IMO. nintendo did say they were going for a launch price that would stick for quite some time. the Wii remained at £180 here for ages, though it was selling very well.

£250 no game....cannot see it being very popular in this market if they go for this. it's not all the money in the world but i believe it's missed the sweet spot if they want to go £250 with no game. i wouldn't be in at launch.

£250 w/nintendoland - quite a likely scenario and i'd say reasonable. i might be in, might not. depends on which way the wind blows. i still need to upgrade to a 3ds xl this winter.

another possible price point for UK could be £229.99 or £230. this would be absolute highest i'd consider it without a game. £229.99 would be GOOD and relatively aggressive with a bundled game (nintendoland). this is what nintendo need to be doing IMO, even if profits are tiny at the beginning. and anything higher than £250...say £280 with game, would be the highest i'd expect and could see it bombing pretty bad. £280 with no game or anything higher in any type of bundle...absolutely suicidal and about as likely as £200 with game. very unlikely.

and an idea of my thoughts on the hardware side of things....and i'm pretty confident about this....it'll be somewhere between 1.2-2 times more powerful than the current HD consoles, depending what sort of metrics you use. 720p for nearly all 3d games but with the advantages of much newer architecture and things like the dedicated DSP processor helping performance considerably. it's also in a smallish box. this would put production cost at a reasonable level, considering that the pad is going to be a major part of it.

nintendo would be making a small profit on each unit from launch, increasing over time. i think anyone who believes it may be more powerful while still being both affordable (remember the pad as a major cost) and turning any sort of profit at launch isn't being realistic. i could care less if it's considered a 'next-gen' console or not. will likely skip out the others when they launch and keep a well specced PC for all other gaming. made the mistake of buying a 360 this gen and while it did get some use, it's now gathering dust while i game on the PC/Wii...

I've actually just realised how true this is.

Do any of you think $250 USD's is out of the question and talking nonsense? I really hope its cheaper just to ensure I get one earlier.

I think $250-300 ($300 at most). If Nintendo didn't learn anything from the GameCube, which with the Wii launch/price I think they did, they will price it above $300 and hope it catches on. If Nintendo learned anything from the GameCube, I would imagine they will make sure they are around/below the PS3 and Xbox 360 prices right now. Sony and Microsoft can wait until September 13th, hear the Wii U price, then wait a month and announce in October, "PS3 getting new thinner model and it will be priced at $200." Same sort of scenario with Microsoft. I think that would hurt the Wii U in the holiday season, if the Wii U is priced more than $300.

Better for that to happen than to behind an entire generation in terms of power. Better to make it up to $400 tops now if that 's what it takes to keep up. This is a next generation system and should not be designed to compete with the 360 & PS3 but with whatever the next systems Microsoft and Sony are going to release.

"WIIU SYSTEM - GM - 11/11/12 $249.99," "WIIU SYSTEM W/ - GM - 11/11/12 $299.99," and "WIIU SYSTEM 349 W/ - GM - 11/11/12 $349.99."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57505947-1/nintendo-wii-u...

Those different skus are interesting. Wonder what they are? I'd guess one adds a Pro-Controller and the other adds a Wiimote + Nunchuck and Pro Controller or something similar. Or maybe the $300US one has a Pro Controller and the $349US one comes with Wii Fit U

Whatever it is $250US sounds about right and hopefully means it's south of $400AU over here.

None of Nintendo's consoles has ever launched for more than $249.99. Here's hoping they'll keep that tradition. I wouldn't mind if the 3 bundles rumor turns out to be true though. Getting more stuff as a bundle for cheaper than buying everything individually would make the system a lot more attractive to some people.

The "they've never launched one for more than $250" argument doesn't have that much weight. The truth is from year to year the value of $250US varies so it's not really fair to compare prices over almost three decades. What you probably should be doing is asking how many oz of gold the systems cost over time. Gold, unlike houses and money, is always worth about the same amount.

So the Wii launched at 12.5oz of gold and you could probably say "no system has ever launched at more than ~13oz of gold" and you'd almost surely be right. However that would mean that the benchmark right now is $650US. The Wii U could launch at $600US and be technically worth less than what the Wii did at its launch.

Yeah, no doubt. The NES when it came out in 1985 was $199. If you account for inflation that's $423 today.

I remember back when the Xbox 360 and PS3 came out and everyone was complaining about the cost of around $500 and how that was SOOOO expensive. We went back and looked at the Atari 2600. If you accounted for inflation it was around $500 when it was released, too.

I think with electronics though it's compounded by the fact that electronics devalue really quickly. Sitting on my shelf right now I can see a 120GB SATA HDD I got in 2005 when SATA was pretty damn new for $120AU. Massive performance boost over the IDE drives I had before and reasonably massive capacity for the time. For that same $120AU not counting inflation I could either buy an SSD that's also 120GB but with ~10x the performance or I could get another HDD with more or less the same performance but with ~17x the capacity.

So if they were to sell the Wii U at the "same" price as consoles past you'd get a HELL of a lot more than what you got in your past consoles.

I am well aware that video games and consoles have gotten much cheaper over the years when you take inflation into account, and I have done the math. Nevertheless, most people don't keep inflation in mind and Nintendo has stuck to the $200-250 price range over the years as gamers seem to feel that's a reasonable amount. The Wii was $249.99 when it launched in 2006, but in modern money, that's the equivalent of $286.11. The numbers are constantly changing, and I'm not suggesting we can predict the cost of the Wii U by looking at the price of Nintendo's past launch prices. I'm just saying Nintendo really likes the $200-250 price range.

I sort of agree with the "Nintendo's past launch prices" argument seeing as...
NES: $199.99 - $249.99
SNES: $199.99
N64: $199.99
GCN: $199.99
Wii: $249.99

However, that last jump made me think about the 3DS and it's price, so I researched the launch prices of the handheld Nintendo consoles...
GB: $89.99
GBC: $69.99
GBA: $99.99
DS: $149.99
3DS: $249.99

As you can see, the prices have climbed over the years. A $349.99 price is far from unreasonable. And yes, inflation is a big part, but bringing out the old prices inflated to now won't really matter...

My point was that the price in USD is arbitrary and doesn't have much real meaning. There is some psychology to it and the reason why it's in $50 increments above $49.99 but in reality it's fairly arbitrary. It's about what people are willing to pay for a game console and that's all there is to it.

Why (and I'm going to swap to Australian dollars) it's $250 for a handheld, $380 for a console, $80 for a game, $999 for a computer, $1500 for a laptop, $1300 for a TV, $15 for an album and $24 for a movie despite the change in actual value, cost of these things and wage improvements over time I don't know. Infact if you charge less than that for most things people will start to get suspicious and think it's old or lower quality and if you charge more they'll think you're ripping them off. That's just how it is and there's no real reason for it...... but in reality it's fairly meaningless.

Consumable products and real estate? Completely different story.

I find it funny how the Game Boy Color costed less than the original Game Boy.

8th December, 31,500 Yen premium, 26,250 Yen basic.
Confirmed Wii U Prices and Release date for Japan.

I hope these carry over to the US. However, the 31500 yen bundle has 32GB while the 26250 has 8GB. Should these prices carry over westward, which one will you get? The one that's cheaper or the one that'll last longer? I might go with the 31500 just because later on I might regret not having the extra GB, but I'm also thinking about the short term and how many games I'll be able to get along with the Wii U. Also, that's a bit close to Christmas, wouldn't you say? Not really too much time to experience the Wii U and it doesn't have a Black Friday deal...

Edit: Actually, no. If it's a direct currency conversion, the 31500 bundle is $405 and the 26250 bundle is $338. Here's hoping we get a bit of a discount! For me anyway, I can only afford a $349.99 Wii U. And it also seems as though there is no NintendoLand.

As cool as it is, no way I'm paying over $299 for a game console. I've been strongly considering getting a PS3 lately and if the 8GB (8GB!? In 2012!) truly goes for $338 then that will rule out a Wii U at launch for me. Probably get one down the road though.

These are Japan bundles and Japan skus so I wouldn't take them too seriously. When the Wii launched Japan got it for what was then equivalent to $215US but it wasn't bundled with Wii Sports and the US got it for $250US with Wii Sports. The 3DSXL recently launched in Japan for $250US without an AC adapter and in the US for $199US..... so take it with a grain of salt

but if you were going to use the 3DSXL as a yardstick expect the "premium" edition for somewhere around $405AU, $325US and €325 with the "non-premium" version for $338AU, $270US and €270...... but then rounded for niceness.... and probably with different bundles and such like including Nintendo Land or something