With Nintendo announcing its new Wii U console yesterday and the UK release date for November 30th of this year, the one great omission from the announcement and line-up was the pricing of the console. With the US, Australia and Japan all getting release dates and full pricing information from Nintendo, we have been left somewhat in the lurch on how much the console will actually cost!
However, UK videogame specialist retailer GAME has announced itself as the lead partner for the Nintendo Wii U in the UK and the have put the new console on pre-order status for £259.99.
This price is for the Basic bundle which gets you a White Wii U, White GamePad and 8GB of memory. Alternatively, if you want the Premium bundle you’ll get a Black Wii U console, black GamePad, 32GB of flash memory, sensor bar, GamePad charging dock, stand and year’s subscription to the Nintendo Network Premium service, all of which will cost £309.99.
Additionally GAME will be stocking a ZombiU pack, which will consist of the Black console Premium pack along with the ZombiU game, plus a pro controller and a Premium Nintendo Network account for £349.99.
Now it is nice to get the Wii U pricing finally, but the keen-eyed and the well-informed amongst us may well have noticed that the £260 and £310 price brackets actually make the Wii U UK version much more expensive when compared to the US and Japan prices.
In Japan the Wii U is priced at ¥26,250 (£210) for the 8GB and ¥31,500 (£250) for the 32GB version, and the US pricing is even lower, with the 8GB Basic model starting at $299.99 (£185) and the 32GB Deluxe model selling for $349.99 (£215!)
The difference in prices when put through currency conversion is pretty shocking if you consider that the Premium 32GB bundle comes in £45 cheaper in the US than our Basic 8GB version in the UK.
So what exactly are we paying more for? We really don’t know yet, but we will be intrigued to find out more!
Additionally, our friends in the States have also somewhat confirmed the pricing for Wii U games with an RRP of $59.99 being confirmed by Nintendo to Polygon. This works out to be just shy of £37 per game by direct conversion!
We will have to wait and see just how much we get charged for games here in the UK, too.
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