You can now pick up a Wii U Premium Edition for the rather affordable price of £179.99, at either Argos or Amazon, who have both lowered prices this morning. Going by the trend it’s alphabetical, so Asda might be next in line to drop the price.
The Premium edition of the console includes a black system and GamePad, stands, a sensor bar and Nintendo Land to get you started. It’s a very steep price cut as it can still be found for around £300 in places, and I paid that price just over one year ago.
It will be interesting to see whether this is just a quick price slash or if the Wii U will sit at this price for months to come – the system has previously floated around the £200 mark, but this is the lowest price the system has been to date in the UK.
This is exactly what the Wii U needs – it’s now about half the price of any other next generation console, and with games such as Donkey Kong Country and Mario Kart just around the corner, Nintendo will be looking to sell systems as they recently lowered profit forecasts.
Via CVG
UPDATE:Â According to a Nintendo representative who spoke to VG247, these price cuts are not official and were instead decided upon by the retailers themselves.
Temascos
Looking a bit more tempting to get now, but I’ve got too many games to play as it is. Will be interesting to hear how this does for system uptake, espeically when Smash and Kart come out for this now cheap system.
jimmy-google
“This is exactly what the Wii U needs”
That depends whether it’s a price cut or a clearing of stock. A few retailers have cleared their stock so it wound’t be a shock if more did.
Blair Inglis
Amazon won’t be clearing stock anyway, and Argos is much the same with things through the back – the reason Sainsburys/Morrisons did that was for shelf space, which these two retailers don’t need to worry about.
bunimomike
Yes and no. It’s fascinating to see the retailers choosing to do this as it sounds like a clear out. It may well not be but you have to keep in mind that it’s not about shelf space. It’s about profit per square foot of shelf space.
However, if Nintendo did officially slash the price (in the near future) that might be a very good thing in the long run.
Eldur
I am getting more and more tempted by a Wii U by the day. If the Windwaker bundle drops to sub-£200, I’ll be sold. Even if the Wii U crashes and burns, I’d be more than happy to play the first party titles (both out now and planned) for that sort of investment.
cam_manutd
Its going to be hard to sell the Wii U now when you have over 8 million gamers that purchased PS4 and XB1. That number will only grow when we account for exclusives i.e, Uncharted, Titanfall. If there were to be a console-quality Pokemon game on the Wii U, that would change my mind altogether.
Eldur
Funny what drives people. If you’re talking console exclusives, then Nintendo is surely hard to beat. I appreciate that they’re not the most ‘core’ experiences out there but in terms of fun, the Big N are hard to be.
Eldur
*Beat, clearly.
bunimomike
Your reply is evidence of that. We’re all so very different. I cannot stand Nintendo’s output (when it comes to games) but it’s because they’re simply not for me. However, that they sell like hot cakes is a lovely thing for the fan base and anyone even remotely interested must be twitching over such a price cut.
It’d be like me trying to enjoy football games (on any console). Not going to happen. :-P
camdaz
Good price but what Ninth need is some advertising, can’t remember the last time I saw some for the Wii U.
arrybags
I do really want a Wii U, just like i really want a 3DS, but apparently i don’t want one enough to pay £180.
I intend on getting one in the summer, for some reason £150 is the magic price for me.
Cron_13
I paid £200 for mine with two games so theyve been available at discount prices if you look around.
That’s a bargain price tho, no brainer considering the releases this year (cost of 3 PS4 games nearly!!)
Must be a day for it, zavvi have dropped xbox ones to £409. Not a massive drop but still…
leeroye
Is the premium one the version with the huge 32gb storage. I would not even consider one untill they address the lack of a decent HDD on the system. Sometimes i wonder what planet Nintendo are on. They release a last Gen console with no HDD space when their competition are releasing next gen? How did they ever think this would sell. Now they have lost support from most 3rd party publishers and are releasing the same old re-hashed mario games for it.
Cron_13
Yep the premium is the 32gb one. To be honest for most users 32gb is ample space. Its a disk based console not the 30gb+ installs of the PS4 and XBOX ONE so the only real reason you’d need to worry about the storage was if you buy a lot of games off the e-Store… And personally I think you’d have to be mad to do so as the prices are as retarded as the PS4 store.
From a speed/access POV the Wii U is fine, it doesn’t feel sluggish to run the games with minimal load times.
Remember as well that the Wii U supports external drives up to 2TB iirc. I guess the storage space could be an issue to some users but I’d say that the majority of gamers will not have any issue at all.
That’s my 2p’s worth on it. I can see why some people would look at the spec and consider it a negative but also take into account that its £170 cheaper than a PS4 and £250 cheaper than an XBOX ONE.
R1MJAW
I totally agree with regards to the storage ‘issue’ … I have the 8Gb basic Wii U and as I have no intention of buying any retail games digitally it is more than adequate and even if I did decide to buy digitally in the future I could just attach an external hdd … which can be up to 3Tb btw.
Cron_13
Ah ok cool. I plugged my 500gb one in just to see if it worked and it was fine :)
Dominic Leighton
I traded my launch Wii U in months ago to go towards my PS4, and I haven’t regretted the decision until recently with the arrival of Super Mario 3D World and Wind Waker HD.
It’s a fantastic little console, there just haven’t been enough reasons to hang onto one. When Mario Kart appears I’ll grab one again – it’s already cheaper than the trade in value I got so I won’t have lost anything!
pitbullmern
Just read the update that its not an official price cut and think Nintendo really need to rethink this.
Would they rather have the console fail than increase the user base ? I really want to play Windwaker HD but refuse to pay £200 plus for the privilege of having another console with last gen technology and minimal storage space.
They are going the way that SEGA went with bad decision after bad decision and will end up being an handheld console maker only the way they are going.