The Wii U is in an odd spot. It never found the audience Nintendo was hoping for, and after two or three years it was already being phased out in favour of the Switch. Despite that, it’s yet to receive a significant price drop, even as the more-successful PlayStation 4 and Xbox One take detours into discount city.
When the Wii U launched in 2012, it came in two flavours: Basic (8GB), which cost $US300 ($400) and was not good, and Premium (32GB), which came at a slightly steeper asking price of $US350 ($467). Basic has pretty much disappeared at this point, and Premium now costs $US300 ($400), but otherwise the official price hasn’t budged.
For comparison’s sake, the Xbox One has dropped from $US500 ($667) all the way to $US250 ($334), while the PS4 has gone from $US400 ($534) to $US300 ($400), with bundles running as low as $US250 and the PS4 Slim even going for $300 at one point in Australia.
For some reason, though, the Wii U — the least popular of them all — is content to stay at an imposing $US300 ($400) price point. And that will never change, given that Nintendo stopped producing new Wii Us in early November. At least maybe it will be a collector’s item soon?
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24 responses to “Four Years Later, The Wii U Hasn’t Gotten Any Big Price Drops”
Nintendo gave up on the Wii U pretty well much straight away. No point harming profit margin I guess.
It did stop me from buying a Wii U though. But Nintendo also did other crazy shit, like emulating Wii but not Gamecube (the two systems are almost identical hardware wise) which also hurt reason to pick one up.
The lack of Gamecube games was the craziest bit, especially after they went to the effort of release the Gamecube controller adapter.
Yep. Very frustrating. Games seem to never go on sale so those of us who own one still can’t fill out our libraries without spending a lot more than it seems worth.
I’d definitely think twice about getting another nintendo console. The deals I’ve picked up on playstation are far, far better.
That was my experience with the original Wii – games that were 5 years old and would be platinum on any other console were still retailing at AUD80.
Yep. I’d love to pick up some deals. Even the SNES games never drop below $10.40. As much as I want to buy 5, I can’t justify $50 on 5 old games and nostalgia. And I’d love to grab some 1st party stuff but again, it never drops below $80. That is TOO MUCH FOR A GAME.
And then PS Store has the Witcher 3 GOTY for $40. Or Arkham Knight and a season pass for $29. Or God of War 3 for $14.
Nintendo aren’t even trying to compete. I actually feel ripped off as a wii u owner. Just give me some deals guys. I bought it at launch. I supported you.
I held out all this time from getting a WiiU because I figured they would pull the GameCube trick of going for $99 but it never happened, not even close
What amazes me though is that the WiiU has maintained shelf space at Target/Big W whereas the GameCube disappeared completely from those chains about 3 years in!
Windwaker is still 64 bucks at JB HiFi, I wait with baited breath that one day, one day. I will see that price marked down.
We had Splatoon but it wasn’t getting played a lot so I sold it. A few months ago my son starts talking about how great it was and how he’d love to play it again. So I started looking around at prices. You just can’t get any first party nintendo games (except for release titles) for less than $64. $68 seems to be the average.
I ended up getting it from ozgameshop for $44.
The situation is weirder in Australia.
I picked up my launch deluxe bundle for 397, which was two bucks less than my launch Wii cost, but now the same bundle is 427.
So not only did we never get the price drop that the rest of the world did, but we also got screwed further.
I do like the wii u, I use it most days, but it never had a chance in our market.
It TOTALLY had a chance, just not with the prices they were asking for it.
they do run out sales on old skylanders packs though, my wii u was something like $150 in a run out from target. have never played skylanders and i had a $100 gift card so i remember it cost me 50 something dollars with skylanders and free monster hunter digital promotion.
My parents have never been interested in or able to understand my love of consoles. However, that did change a little when I bought them a Wii. They absolutely loved it.
I would like to get them a Wii U but when a dead console still retails for almost the launch price, it is not going to happen.
It’s not as heavily a motion gaming console as the wii, so probably wont have the same appeal to your parents. Great for sitting on the shitter playing Mario on the gamepad though.
Nintendo can kiss my grits – if the price don’t fall, I ain’t buying.
I was lucky, I picked up a pre-owned 32Gb Wii U from Ebgames for like $250 that was in pristine condition (a good friend tipped me off). I do love the off screen gimmick to play Bayonetta or Zelda whilst my partner can still watch TV and be in the same room and have some banter, but as other commentators have noted Nintendo IPs don’t seem to lessen in price with age. Super Mario World 3d is still a $70 title, Twilight Princess and Windwaker will set you back between$60 and $70 still. And it’s not just a Wii U thing, 3ds games are the same. I recently went looking for Lugis mansion 2 for my partner and it’s still a $45 game in most places that have stock, even pre-owned. I think the inability to expand your game collection easily and cheap, even at a pre-owned level seriously hurts the Wii-U appeal as well.
Luigis Mansion is worth the price of admission its such a wicked game.
oh absolutely! no real complaints here (So far I think I’ve spent more time with it than he has!)
Price discussions filtering down from the US may as well come from European Union. It just doesn’t match up with the local economy.
No matter how hard you try and stay at a wider angle, talking about this in macro-terms, it’s always going to boil down to a micro-level.
What you ‘can’ get on a level playing field and actually discuss is Nintendo’s ethos about knowing and keeping the idea of ‘value’ around. Everybody’s got a different opinion on that.
As for me, I got a Wii U at launch and play it a hell of a lot more than I do any other gaming device I own outside of the 3DS. There’s this thing, and it’s as much a mission statement from Nintendo as it is a console. I’m satisfied.
The only things I was interested in the WiiU for ended up coming out on other platforms (including 3DS).
So… oh well? Another Nintendo generation missed.
Their pricing is absurd. I’m getting the Switch for Zelda. That’s it. It’s a Zelda machine.
Maybe it’ll have some Wii compatibility and I’ll pick up some digital store downloads.
I’ve given up on Nintendo ever getting around to a proper backwards compatibility system.
There’s no reason at all that every single first party game Nintendo ever released shouldn’t have been playable on the WiiU. If I could download NES to GC games at a reasonable price (no more than $10 for a GC game) I’d have bought one in a heartbeat.
Any system they put in will be cumbersome, half-assed and expensive. Kinda like the WiiU actually.
Picked up my Pro MK8 bundle from k-mart for $178 during their raincheck price disaster. Bargain!
I think the problem was the stupid tablet cost $200ish on its own.
Anyway, I’ve said a million times that the WiiU was the shittiest large-scale thing Nintendo ever did and I’ll be standing by that until they do something worse.
Mediocre 3rd party games tricked in, but more importantly it never got a single 5-star, best-of-a-generation classic which is normally what makes Nintendo consoles worth owning.
A small handful of very good games (Splatoon and…. uhhhhh Splatoon), some good updates of Nintendo staples (Mario Kart and Smash), a few HD remakes and some surprisingly sub-par 1st party games just never made it worth forking out the price.
I mean even the Wii got the two Super Mario Galaxy games.
Fortunatly, I think Nintendo have made some important fundamental changes with the Switch (principally consolidating the mobile and console platforms so their teams aren’t spread so thingly) and I’m pretty optimistic that it’ll be good.
Worst. Nintendo. Console. In generations.
Nintendo has such contempt for their consumers and fans they deserve the position they’re in.
Can you imagine if the switch is a failure then Nintendo will be slogging it out on mobile. YUK.
They made so much money on the Wii and 3DS that they will be fine with another 2 consoles with Wii U success, maybe even more. They already had some serious bank, but those to 2 moneymakers made them a heap more.