The Wii U Basic Set set is no more in Japan, Nintendo announced today.
The Nintendo.co.jp page states that the 8GB Wii U is “slated to go out of production shortly”. The 32GB model will continued to be sold, and Nintendo is introducing a white 32GB version in Japan starting in June.
This has been a long time coming. Back in 2013, Kotaku following statement to Kotaku: “To clarify: Nintendo is working with its retail partners to simply rebalance the stock of the White 8GB and the Black 32GB Wii U models in the market. Consumers looking for either model will continue to find them available.” But recently, it seems finding the console in the U.S. has been harder.
In the past, Nintendo has often announced the discontinuation of hardware variations by similar notices on its official site. So, yes, the 8GB’s death is now official — in Japan, at least.
No word yet how this will effect regions outside Japan.
Comments
7 responses to “The 8GB Wii U Is Dead In Japan”
Is this like that ‘Arcade Xbox 360’ they tried to sell for nobody and it didn’t?
Well, the WiiU is 8gb for the base model and 32gb for the other. I have the base model with a 16GB USB drive for game storage. So… Kinda, but it’s not obsolete like the Arcade was, just unwanted.
Yeah i guess it’s a bit like that. The difference here is that the 32GB “Pro” console doesn’t really have enough space either. Most avid gamers will be purchasing external HDD’s for their console either way. I picked up my 8GB “basic” Wii U on sale for $180 last year and got an external drive for it, it worked out much, much cheaper than buying the $429 32GB console.
I loved my Arcade, they were selling them for 150 bucks at harvey norman a few years ago so I bought one, modded it and put a 1TB drive in it. It wasn’t worth paying the extra money to get a 120gb drive that I was just going to pull out anyway.
Hasn’t the 8Gb Wii U been off shelves for ages?
When Splatoon launches the Wii U is getting a Price Drop down to $360
https://ebgames.com.au/wiiu-208807-Nintendo-Wii-Splatoon-Console-Wii-U
I’ve wanted a Wii U for a long time, I think now might be the time to buy as the price Drop and there’s enough content out there and coming soon.
It’s almost criminal that the system never got the price drop here that the rest of the world did. But finally, that splatoon bundle looks like really good value!
Also, my launch day deluxe was 397, 30 less than it is now, and 3 bucks cheaper than my launch Wii was!
It’s a shame because the 8GB was the best value when it went on sale! Last year I got my Wii U + Skylanders + Nintendoland for $260. Premium isn’t worth the extra price since you’ll need an external HDD anyway for serious downloading.