Nintendo Wii U Pricing | GKick Network

September 13th, 2012 by Nickie Williams

So, the inevitable has finally happened. No, no I don’t mean that it’s now raining money or Hell finally froze over.

The one thing myself and many of you out there had finally been waiting on has happened. The Japanese fun guys over at Nintendo HQ were kind enough to finally put us out of our misery. That soul-crushing, sleep-interrupting misery about the Wii U. Okay, so maybe you didn’t lose sleep over it. But nevertheless, wait no longer as I finally have the information for you.

The Nintendo Wii U will be released on November 18th in the United States, November 30th in Europe and December 8th in Japan. I’m a little disappointed about the staggered release dates, but it’s sad to say that you might be waiting for a review of the console from me- I doubt I will be able to get my hands on one until after the Christmas rush. It’ll be a treat to myself for managing to survive the Holiday season another year

There will be two bundles or versions of the console. The Basic white version comes with 8GB memory, a white Wii U stylus, sensor bar and one GamePad for $299.99/£210 and the Deluxe black version comes with 32GB memory, black stylus, sensor bar, charging stand, play stand, upright stand, GamePad and if you live in NA/EU- you’ll also get Nintendo Land tossed in too. That package comes in at the slightly more expensive price of $349.99/£250.

Good news for the Europeans though, there will be a separate limited-edition bundle released that includes the Deluxe bundle and ZombiU. This has no price at this time, but speculators are placing bets for a retail price around £300. In a time of austerity, does this mean that a lot of families out there will be scrimping and saving this Christmas to buy their loved ones this new console? It’s certainly a lot more expensive than the original Wii console, which originally retailed around £180 when first released.

There is some gold at the end of the rainbow though- the old Wii Remotes can be used with the Wii U console, as well as the Nunchuks. And if you can’t afford the Deluxe version of the console, it’s been said that the 8GB will be upgradable via the addition of personal USB thumb drives and HDD. So, this is certainly a plus. Since games and downloaded content will be able to be transferred from the Wii to the Wii U- the good old faithful SD card slot will be back in action once again. (Note to self: move all games off the system to a SD card…)

I’ve got a kicker for you though. If you want another GamePad for your shiny new Wii U- it’ll set you back about $170/£100. Yikes. The new console can support up to two GamePads, and not four like the original Wii. But like I said, you can use your Wii Remotes instead. One thing I am looking forward to with the new GamePad is the deal that Nintendo is bringing back the rumble. I love to feel the rumble on a gaming pad, I love it with my XBox 360 and I miss it from the days of the GameCube. The pad will also have a built in camera and microphone for video chat. Do I smell a possible Skype interaction over the Wii U?

Sad times. The Wii U, unlike the Wii will not be compatible with that lovely library of GameCube titles you have gathering dust. Just the normal Wii titles. That means, you might have to hang tight to your old beleagued console to play amazing games like Super Mario Sunshine or Luigi’s Mansion. As I mentioned before, all content recently purchased from the Wii Store will be transferrable to your new console via the SD card. Hopefully that means we might start seeing GameCube games appearing on the store soon with the lack of support for the much-loved console.

Still interested? Oh me too! I’m not known as the Nintendo Geek round these parts for nothing

Brad

I’m not so sure about this console. I mean it looks pretty cool, but when it comes to hardware, it seems as if BARELY anything has really improved. They claimed that this would be pretty revolutionary, but Microsoft has already said their new Xbox would have a wicked graphics card in it…

Maybe it’s revolutionary since Nintendo seems to aim for Family games more than anything. Then again, with Black Ops 2 and Darksiders 2 headed to the Wii U, that is arguable.