Wii U discounted at UK retailer
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Wal-Mart subsidiary ASDA shaves £50 off Basic and Deluxe versions of Nintendo's latest console.
Wii U Basic and Deluxe consoles have received a £50 price cut at United Kingdom retailer ASDA, a subsidiary of retail giant Wal-Mart.
The retailer is now offering the Basic model through its website for £199 (down from £249) and the Deluxe black system with Nintendo Land for £249 (down from £299).
It appears ASDA is the only such retailer offering the discount.
In January, Nintendo lowered Wii U sales expectations 27 percent from 5.5 million units to 4 million units for its current fiscal year ending March 31. As of December 31, Nintendo has officially sold just over 3 million units.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has ruled out an official price cut for the Wii U.
According to GameStop chief financial officer Rob Lloyd, the Wii U needs a blockbuster to spark sales. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot today pledged to support the console, but said the system "just has to sell more."
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
583 comments
Well, I am BORED of the Wii U already. It was exciting, at first, because it was like HEY its a new console. However, it lost a lot of steam. Even though it has only been 4 months, there are NO good games on the horizon. Lego? Yeah right. Rayman Legends (which I was very excited to get). Delayed. Next 6 months? None. So I figure, I might as well trade it in for a Playstation because I want to get MLB The Show and a few other titles. Good job Nintendo on robbing me of my enthusiasm for your "next generation" console. Cheers.
shopto.net is selling the Nintendo Wii U Console 8gb White Basic Pack even cheaper!! It is selling for £189.85 + free next day delivery.
you say first partys stop relying on them let me tell you this that alot of people agree on whats the point of having 3 consoles that equally the same in some areas to have the same games, so first partys games or for playstation fanboys ps exclusive are really inportant, because you never shut up about ps exclusive content ........ soooo shhhh stop being hypocritical let the console breathe and if you dont like it stop commenting and arguing ,
Right, im gonna have to have my say here,
You people never cease to amaze me , i like every console so no fanboyism,,
Ps3 and 360 have had a good life so there should not be any reason not to out sell the wii u in games look how many there is ,, but look how long they have been out , 6 years or summat,,,, wii u couple of months,, think about that brain boxes.... yes a tablet controller you complain about it. so i reckon that most of you people should return your ipads and android tablets and stop playin angry birds on it because apparently you dont like a tablet,,,,, the wii u has not long been release janaury and febuary are slow months expecially everyone paying there xmas debt off... stop bashing this console and let it breathe it already been suffocated before we even heard it was gonna ever go into production , becasue they wanna see it fall,, you say ps4 is gonna have this gonna have that ,, thats being creative fair play i reckon it be good ,,, ok nintendo is creative and its wrong ,,,, i used to own a gamecube too let me tell you you put games side by side to a ps2 the graphics was smoother but did it win the console war no ,,,, so graphics aint everything... on that note this comment has just in terms throw a dog a bone to eveyone to bash... go ahead
£249 is 375.59 US Dollar and the American set is $350 so yea I wont expect an american price drop and the reason why its more expensive because Britain has alto more tax then the US
the only thing that can save this system are the first-party titles. without them, this thing is doomed
@bongsyas_23 like every system ever. There would be no 360 without the first halo on the original Xbox
well that motion camera that coms with ps4 that detects your motion from your body where have i seen that before. and wow being able to use the vita with ps4 so u dont have to use the tv wow thats original. but if it works for 2 other companies products they may as well use a good thing. a asda manager friend of mine has told me they have sold more wii-u consoles and games this week due to the price drop than they sold on the day of launch. so its it would appear that most of the consoles problem was cost. most of its release titles prices have dropped to nearly the same as their xbox 360 and ps3 counterparts. I got Black Ops 2 for £28 brand new for the Wii-U which is £4 cheaper than it is on others. Not that im playing the damn thing since i just got Tomb Raider for Xbox 360 which is absolutely fantastic. A must buy game this year along with ni-No Kuni.
lol nintendos not the one making gimmicks, you should look at sony and its share button and tacked on touch pad -oh wait i get it its only good when sony or microsoft does it but if nintendo did it its a crime grow the heck up people,
what's the point of this article?
people just are just keep bash nintendo failed console
they either price cut it to 150$ or left behind on the market
Nintendo need to wake up and make a kick ass console again. Stop with all this gimmicky crap and make a system that rivals or exceeds the next gen. They also need to stop trying to act cute and child friendly by calling their consoles things like Wii and WiiU. Whoever thought Wii was a great name for a console needs sacking!
I'd love to see a Nintendo console that has the same feeling about is as the Super Nintendo once did. A console with a proper control pad!
I bought a Wii U at launch.
Price drop coming 2013, I've always said it. This is what is unfolding.
I probably won't be able to post due to glitchspot in articles for another three months, so no replies. tootles.
Although i kind of feel for Nintendo, i cant help but feel that they have brought this upon themselves. In the late 70/early 80s they gave us Mario, this was refreshing, engaging and simply wonderful as it offered a new, colourfull and addictive gaming experience, throughout the last 20/30 years they have simply regurgitated the same formula albeit with different skins, the gave us the Wii and a unique way to play, but other than that they have displayed a huge amount of naivity and a certain amount of arrogance thinking that Gamers want the exact same products over and over again.
The problem as i see it is that Gamers today have much greater expectations of that of gamers in the 70s, 80s and even 90s.
They simply need to evolve and embrace 3rd party development teams and need to stop being so damn stubborn.
Only my 2 penneths worth.
1 Like GameStop say the console needs big name (good) games to sell the console. Developers (Ubisoft at least) say the console needs to sell more in order to justify developing games.
This will end well.
@Apastron Ubisoft however apart from bringing their games multiformat are nintendos best friend. we could have done with rayman legends early but if for whatever reason the UK release launch of PS4 is after the US and Japan we will get the biggest title of the year EARLY on wii-u.... Watchdogs will be out this year on Wii-U its got an estimated late quarter 4 launch window so expect it around the same time Far Cry 3 came. Speaking of Ubisoft their UK Quality Testing Staff Room has a 7ft Bronze Statue of King Kong in it. Bet that would take some melting down for scrap.
@abHS4L88 @emptycow nintendo took millions from the gamers and they are giving nothing back they sell you a system then they dont even put the word out about the fucking thing now they are losing all the 3rd party devs and they wont put any money into locking any of them into outside of failed games that they locked in for cheap if nintendo had balls they would be pissed about rayman being pushed back by 7 months and told ubisoft to put it out now or pay ubisoft to put it out now
1 Like @abHS4L88 and yes nintendo is telling people what they should want when they say stupid shit like "its not about graphics " and they also tell you you cant have great graphics and great games thats bullshit all nintendo is doing is selling you trash at a high price so they can put money in the back from the start they or short changing the gamer and its not working this time i think nintendo lost brand faith when it comes to consoles and this is why the wiiu is not selling nintendo burned to many gamers with the n64 ,gamecube , and worste of all the wii and the wiiu is just the wii all over again people see it and they are not going to follow
No, they're telling you what they believe in, which is different than telling you what you should want. I also don't remember them saying anything about not having great graphics & great games because many of their games have had amazing graphics.
How are they selling "trash at a high price" when every Wii U is sold at a loss? Maybe to you ignorant "hardcore gamers" yeah Nintendo's no longer relevant but like I said, you guys only make up around 15-20% of the whole community and all Nintendo really needs is about 10% to succeed.
That's your opinion about Nintendo. Just because you don't recognize what they're doing doesn't mean everyone else agrees.
Nintendo does things their own way and for some reason, it almost always works out for them. Sure marketing right now is not that great, but that only means that they're gearing up for something bigger in the near future.
The $350 bundle is the better value, so more likely they're losing more money off of that one than the $300 one.
Again, that's not greed, so because a gaming business that makes majority of their profits from hardware sales doesn't want to sell their consoles at a 50% loss and now that's greed? No, it's called not being stupid. There's a reason why companies like Atari and SEGA have dropped out of the hardware business (Atari going bankrupt recently) while Nintendo is still very much a healthy company, because they make sound business decisions and don't squander their money just because they have it.
Why don't you learn something about business and economics before running your mouth off about who's greedy?
@abHS4L88 @emptycow sony is trying nintendo is trying nothing microsoft once gave rockstar 50.million for some gta content cant say i could see nintendo ever doing that also whats up with the fucking wiiu ads is nintendo smoking crack the have like one ad and this is coming from a company that has billions
It's not being cheap or greedy, it's about being smart so you can secure survival in the future. Sure this Gaikai thing sounds great but the real question is, how well would it work? Also pretty much every "unique" thing the PS4 is doing can also be seen as gimmicks, especially if they don't turn out to be as awesome as you guys are making it out to be. There's a fine line between gimmicks and innovation, learn that.
@abHS4L88 @emptycow nintendo out of there own mouth with one wiiu game sold we make money on every wiiu sold nintendo never said if it was the $350 system they made money on or the $300 i bet you its the fucking $300 unit they make money on if you buy one game nintendo is losing less then $30 max on each wiiu sold the ps3 was losing $300 on each system sold dont tell me nintendo is taking any risks nintendo is all greed
@abHS4L88 thats all 3ds who cares about handhelds selling look at the world wide sale numbers the ps3 and xbox 360 are out selling the wii ,wiiu,3ds in both the u.s and europe japan is all about handheld systems its nothing big that the 3ds is selling in japan but look at the console sales sony is kiling the wiiu and the wii
Of course the PS3 is selling really well, its hitting its stride right now will the Wii is basically dead in software releases and the Wii U is still pretty much fresh out of the gate. It's like being proud that a firmly established restaurant is pulling in more business than one that's about to close down and another that just opened up.
So what was the 360's excuse when the PS2 was still selling more than it when it first launched? January and February have always been the two worst months when it comes to electronic retail.
Yes MARCH, so let's see how the Wii U performs this month when two major titles are coming out and people are going to have money from their tax returns.
@abHS4L88 @emptycow not true at all the ps3 sales should be slowing not getting bigger the wiiu is not selling the reason for that is demand you dont need games on a system to have demand the wiiu bring nothing to the table thats why people dnt want it they rather buy a ps3 when your new system is getting its ass kicked by 7 and 8 year old hardware you know you are in a world of shit look at the ps3 numbers from 2007 the ps3 cost was $600 and they sold almost 1 million systems in march that year last month the wiiu did not even hit 150.000 systems sold the wiiu is sinking
Lol, this guy is full of crap. Let's look at numbers, if all gamers care about are "cutting edge graphics, sophisticated AI and narrative." then why are the games that meet this criteria not selling by the tens of millions? The "hardcore gaming community" is supposed to be roughly around 30-40m people yet I don't see games like Uncharted, Skyrim, Crysis, and whatever other games you want to list even breaking 10m. So apparently no, not all "real gamers" care only about "cutting edge graphics, sophisticated AI and immersive narrative." Also Nintendo's not trying to dictate what the next generation is going to be, they're simply adding to the possibilities, more reasons why this guy is an idiot and can't wait to see more developers close their doors just because they can't meet the "lofty standards of the hardcore gamer."
what people fail to see is nintendo has lost the core gamer.... nintendo lost most core gamers with the gamecube then even more with the wii now they are truly the new dreamcast they lost most core gamers
@emptycow Sony has lost the core gamer.
Just under 9m for their biggest seller GT5 just shows that people are ONLY buying PS3 for blu ray.
PS4 won't have the movie buffs buying it.
PS4 will be dead within 14 months!
@wcwj26 lol yea right the top selling game this week is metal gear at almost 1 million copies sold the ps3 has the top selling console game in the world almost every week i dont see them losing the core gamer thats nintendos job
@wcwj26 i own both the ps3 and xbox 360 the 360 is a awesome system but microsoft is huge in the u.s and big in europe but the ps3 is big world wide
@wcwj26 the ps3 in december sold almost 4 million systems it fucking out sold the wiiu in a month and last month the ps3 sold over 600.000 systems world wide the wiiu sold 120.000 systems world wide now tell me who lost the core gamers again
@wcwj26 are you nuts go do your home work i look at the numbers every week the ps3 is kicking ass all over the world every month and the sales of the console are getting higher every year not lower
@emptycow LOL It's because of Xbox it's selling well. Sony hasn't had a top seller since GT5 ;-)
Even AAA multiplats are mostly made up of Xbox sales.
NOBODY buys PS3 to play, that's why it's game sales are the weakest this gen and Netflix is it's biggest draw!
You're really dedicated to these Nintendo articles, pretty much to the point where you're obsessed with Nintnedo and constantly feel the need to try and bring them down.
@abHS4L88 @emptycow watch the video everything hes saying is true nintendo is full of shit they tell people "its not about graphics its about a new way to play " more like we are nintendo we want to sell you old shit and tell you graphics dont matter so we can sell you out of date hardware for a high price
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