The UK sees a £20 increased in Wii prices

By admin

April

20

2009

A rise in the current price of the Nintendo Wii looks to be going ahead at one of the UK’s main games retailer, Gamestation.

The recent increase in the price of Wiis by Nintendo of up to £20, which is reflected by the rising strength of the Yen over the pound sterling, was report recently. Whether or not retailers would pass on this increase in price to the customer was, at that time, uncertain although now signs of the rise in cost to the customer are now being seen for the first time.

Over the Easter weekend the impending change was seen be anyone who visited Gamestation, the UK high street retailer and purchased a Wii console. It was a clear indication that the console price was about to increase with the till receipts showing the Wii console prices as £199.99, whilst the price that was advertised for the Wii bundle was still £179.99.

With Nintendo also hinting that the cost for first-party games may also increase it could mean that core gamers as well as new users may end up paying extra for brand new games, which will further impact on the overall cost of the console to the customer. The majority of new games launched by Nintendo will usually cost £34.99 at the moment, although this could be set to rise to £39.99 or possibly even £44.99 at some point in the very near future.

Whether third-party publishers could be affected by these increases has not been mention the fact that multiformat games are usually of a similar price across all the console ranges, with title like Sonic Unleashed release on the Wii and the 360 at £39.99, would mean that many of the smaller publishers could be priced out of the Wii market by any more price increases from Nintendo.

Even though the price of the Wii is still available new at £179.99 it is inevitable that the price will increase but there has been no official indication of when this will occur.