UK Wii-tailers about to get charged more by Nintendo
by Alexander Sliwinski 
{ Mar 11th 2009 at 1:44PM } 
The Wii currently has a recommended retail price of £180 ($249 USD) to UK consumers. Nintendo is leaving the price charged to customers up to the stores.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Markez @ Mar 11th 2009 1:49PM
They'll offset the uptick in price by throwing in a free kick in the crotch at check out. WHAT A STEAL
reguy @ Mar 11th 2009 1:55PM
I thought the online play was the free kick in the crotch? But yeah raising the price of the console and possibly games to retailers and then turning around and saying to consumers, "we didnt raise the price, the retailer did"
Such F'ing greed. But of course its Nintendo and everyone on joystiq will defend this.
I wish Sony and MS would raise their prices just to see what all of you would say.
Markez @ Mar 11th 2009 1:56PM
Where'd you buy yer jump to conclusions mat, I want one.
Super G-Man @ Mar 11th 2009 2:07PM
Ha ha, jump to conclusions matt :) I want one too.
I also want my stapler back.
bug frawg @ Mar 11th 2009 2:12PM
I could set the building on fire.
BPMOmega [gamertag] @ Mar 11th 2009 2:29PM
I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday, yyyeeeaaahhh...
prateeko @ Mar 11th 2009 3:10PM
Well, considering they actually make profit on the Wii (unlike Sony which loses money on each system and I think Microsoft comes out about even), it's pretty crappy of them to ask for more. More so when you realize they're making money hand over fist right now...
Spartan @ Mar 11th 2009 2:04PM
So, the first price change they ever have is upwards?
*looks outside for other signs of the apocalypse*
Markez @ Mar 11th 2009 2:05PM
Everybody Loves Raymond is still on television?
whookid @ Mar 11th 2009 2:06PM
Makes sense, the £ is basically almost the same as $ now so i guess the price is heading towards £250 to match that. Same goes for software. Pretty annoying but that's part of the recession i guess.
Gehodra @ Mar 11th 2009 2:11PM
"£180 ($249 USD)"
Beh?
Jerk Face @ Mar 11th 2009 2:13PM
Read English more good.
The Baron @ Mar 11th 2009 4:53PM
I guess we're paying the price for not adopting the Euro.
"Hah, why should we join your currency when ours is doing fine?"
Murphy's Law is using recession!
Critical Hit!
Saria the Cat @ Mar 11th 2009 2:18PM
Dang, is it a good time to head to the UK right now for us dollar-wielders? 'Cause last time I went, it was more like £1 to $2. I was basically econo-raped.
Markez @ Mar 11th 2009 2:23PM
...
BPMOmega [gamertag] @ Mar 11th 2009 2:30PM
That sounds... painful?
The Baron @ Mar 11th 2009 4:54PM
Yes, come buy stuff here. Come in your thousands! Come spend our troubles away!
Spartan @ Mar 11th 2009 7:32PM
...
that sounds painful
and cheap.
whookid @ Mar 11th 2009 2:18PM
?? £180 was the price before the supposed price raise, I read it fine i'm not stupid.
I Like Corn @ Mar 11th 2009 3:43PM
Actually, you are stupid.
It's the price charged to RETAILERS to buy the console. When the retailers turn around and actually sell the thing in stores, they're not going to get a profit by selling it at the same price they bought it for.
You'd suck at running a storefront, apparently.
Jesse @ Mar 11th 2009 11:04PM
Actually, I'm pretty sure you would suck at running a store front Corn... the truth is, most stores don't make crap on consoles. I have bought consoles wholesale and making a profit from the actual hardware itself isn't easy. It's all the damn accessories and games that make the money.
For example, I buy 100 copies of a game at $25-$30 each and resell them for $50-$60... that's a lot of profit. I buy 100 Wiis for $240 each and sell them for $250... since you only buy one or two of those in a household, I'll get $10 for that console sale, but will make $25-$30 on each game sold.
Now since I run my own business and have one employee (myself) and pay rent to myself for storing everything in my place, I get less profit towards the business, but in the end, I'm still making all my money on games and movies and not the consoles themselves.
What whookid basically said was that the MSRP would keep going up in places like the UK because the GBP isn't worth what it used to. If you can trade 1 USD for 1 GBP and you're paying less then 250 GBPs for a Wii, people like myself will just import everything. The problem is for people who live in the UK who are making the same as they did last year, but everything will cost more which means you're standard of living was just lowered.
travsam @ Mar 11th 2009 2:22PM
No surprise... in the UK they scream about it before hitting... in Mexico we just only complain because we get the increment of the prices almost instantly...
JXCgunrunna @ Mar 11th 2009 6:41PM
there are still people in Mexico? I thought yall were on ya good old way up to that there canada and was just passin through our humble united states.
sorry had to do it.
BPMOmega [gamertag] @ Mar 11th 2009 2:33PM
This is pretty ridiculous.
Even if they were only making a couple bucks off the Wii to begin with, over two years have passed since the system launched so all components for the system should be even cheaper than before.
When the world is in a bit of an economic downturn... you want to RAISE prices?
This is why Nintendo of Europe is the worst Nintendo branch of them all.... Or maybe Nintendo of Australia is still worse...
Noshino @ Mar 11th 2009 2:39PM
Funny thing is that the Wii would be the first console ever to get a price raise before a price cut....
Bluebrake @ Mar 11th 2009 10:42PM
Agreed, this is a joke.
They were making a huge profit on the Wii at launch. God knows what they're making on it at this point. To claim that they "have to" raise the price now because of a bit of an adjustment in the exchange rate is an insult. Sony has bit the bullet and sucked up most of its losses due to exchange rates, and they're losing as much with each console as Nintendo makes.
I'll tell you what's going on here. Nintendo was as shocked as anybody when the Wii turned out to be a sales dynamo. They realized they could get more money for it, and they've been looking for an excuse to raise the price ever since.
Incidentally, where Sony and Microsoft dropped their Canadian prices when the CAD soared, guess who was the one company to maintain the higher MSRP? Funny how they don't "have to" adjust their prices when it works against them.
Mr Khan @ Mar 11th 2009 2:56PM
It is a rather unprecedented move, and definitely not the right move to curry consumer favor. Its doubtful that it's hurting them that much, considering how profitable they have the Wii anyway, and the customers aren't going to be happy at all
A dumb move, shortsighted and greedy, but it'll be interesting to see if it impacts demand
Nigeria @ Mar 11th 2009 3:08PM
Hopefully this move will hit demand, forcing Nintendo Europe to reverse this decision. I doubt that'll be the case though.
Markez @ Mar 11th 2009 3:14PM
I'd venture that it'll impact demand, but not to the degree where it'll outpace the profits they'll reap from the change. Effing ridiculous.
Megadanxzero @ Mar 11th 2009 3:10PM
Oh Nintendo... The small hope I had that you would start selling your last-gen hardware at a reasonable price sometime soon just went out the window... Even WITH the recession there should have been a price-cut by now...
Pvt. Joker @ Mar 11th 2009 3:13PM
on the bright side, we finaly found out what phase 2 is...
Phase 1: Collect Underpants Phase 2: (?)short sighted increase in price of product. Phase 3: Profit!
BigD145 @ Mar 11th 2009 3:20PM
Nintendo makes the same profit on this move. If prices didn't rise, they'd make less.
Pvt. Joker @ Mar 11th 2009 3:41PM
Right...profit....exactly what i said.
ALH @ Mar 11th 2009 3:29PM
Arent nintendo printing money? Cant they take the hit for the sake of not alienating brits? i mean we already get a raw deal with release dates and the likes. This is madness.
Lee @ Mar 11th 2009 3:59PM
OK I get why they're doing this but its still NOT COOL.
still I have my Wii and unless this gets nicked or breaks I won't be buying a new one.
Poisoned Al @ Mar 11th 2009 4:16PM
Yeah, becuase duct-tape doesn't grow on trees does it? Seriously, you're the ONLY company with a console that turns a profit... oh wait, the other two have GAMES to make money on don't they?
Mr Khan @ Mar 11th 2009 4:23PM
Again, software sales have proven that one false.
aristokrat @ Mar 11th 2009 5:27PM
Um, when was the last Nintendo-published game released? Regardless of software sales of other people's games, that's not where the money is (I don't know this for a fact, but I assume that this is the case or otherwise Sony and Microsoft wouldn't publish games).
In the past couple of months, Microsoft has published Halo Wars, Lips, Banjo-Kazooie, Gears of War 2, Scene It? 2, and Fable 2.
Sony has published Killzone 2, SOCOM, Resistance 2, MotorStorm 2, LittleBigPlanet, and some SingStars.
Nintendo hasn't published a single game in 2009 (for the Wii, since that's the relevant system here), and in the latter part of 2008 published only Animal Crossing, Wii Music, and Wario Land. This is not exactly a stellar list, and does not represent a lot of profit. Coming up they have Wii Sports Resort (which will undoubtedly do well since it isn't a game but rather hardware and a tech demo) and Punch-Out, which brings back nostalgia and will sell okay at least (depends how the gameplay is, as I'm not a fan of Wii Boxing, I'll wait for the reviews, but I definitely see this as a no-buy without WM+). But they haven't been making a lot of money of anything other than on the console itself. Makes sense that they would try to make more money off the only thing they're selling. Maybe they think this will all come crashing down at some point and want to make as much money as they can in the short run, so that they can afford to lurk in obscurity for another decade.
Note: And the DS published list isn't much greater, with only some Pokemon, Fire Emblem, and maybe Kirby (I don't know anything about popularity of DS titles).
Poisoned Al @ Mar 11th 2009 6:16PM
The attach rate to the Wii is pathetic. If they could get a higher software to console ratio, Nintendo could build a island fort out of gold and shoots dimond encrusted missiles at Sony and Microsoft.
JXCgunrunna @ Mar 11th 2009 6:53PM
as of novenber, the wii had a better attach rate than the PS3.
sam @ Mar 11th 2009 7:40PM
@aristo: Sure the money is in sales of other people's games - not that much money per-copy, but given that your outlay and risk is in fact *zero*, it's good money. I don't think Nintendo are hurting for cash.
If the current retail price is £180 inc VAT, that's £156.50 without, equivalent to a US price of $216.50 before tax (compared to US retail $250), or a Japanese price of 21,100円 before tax (compared to Japanese retail 25,000円, which is probably including Japan's rather lower sales tax but I can't be bothered to work it out, and which anyway doesn't include Wii Sports).
So the current UK retail price is significantly lower than the price in both US and Japan (even though unlike the Japanese version, it includes Wii Sports) - not shocking that they would want to increase it. Disappointing, but not shocking.
A nicer move to equalise prices would've been a 5,000円 and $20 price drop in the other markets, with prices left stable in the UK... but at the end of the day, if it's still selling at the higher price, there's no reason for them to drop the price.
aristokrat @ Mar 11th 2009 8:00PM
The attach rate is an imperfect, or even irrelevant, statistic here. As I said before, first-party title sales is what drives Nintendo's bottom line, and in the last 6-9 months, Nintendo's have been lame.
Once a console has been sold, Nintendo isn't making any more money on that piece of equipment. They've created another customer to sell their games to, but they haven't been creating games to sell to customers lately. For all the crap they got about abandoning the "hard core" crowd after E3, they seem to have abandoned first-party sales altogether lately. I know they have a handful of games in development, but so does everybody else but more.
aristokrat @ Mar 11th 2009 8:02PM
I know that there are licensing fees involved and that Nintendo probably gets some kind of cut or something from third-party published sales, but it can't be nearly as lucrative as publishing the games. Like I said, if this wasn't the case, Microsoft or Sony wouldn't publish games, or nobody else would and they'd let the console maker publish everything.
Poisoned Al @ Mar 11th 2009 10:59PM
tl;dr.
God, why do you fuckers feel the need to defend these corporations? They are all out to get your money, and if you think otherwise, you're an idiot! To them, you are a wallet attached to an annoying sack of flesh. If they had it their way, they would never deal with you. They just put the prices up, because they WANT MORE MONEY! Anything you say won't change that fact.
Think Nintendo are different? HA! If anything they are the most cynical and cold-heated of the three. Bar a few great minds, it's a very clinical company. Their HQ is like a hospital, only more depressing... and cleaner.
aristokrat @ Mar 14th 2009 10:02AM
I was agreeing with your point, and proving it as well.
Poisoned Al @ Mar 14th 2009 5:11PM
(wasn't aimed at you)
Dante G @ Mar 11th 2009 5:26PM
This is pretty simple IMO. They're paying for an imported product. If you're currency is not as strong as it used to be, you have to pay more...
We're used to that here in Mexico...
Russ Carroll @ Mar 12th 2009 12:27PM
Greed kills.
Everyone else lowers prices over time as parts get cheaper to make. Nintendo is making the Wii for less than it was 2 years ago, its financial reports and statements about how they ramped up supply skupport this. This is a greedy move and as big a fan as I am of Nintendo I am really disappointed to hear of this move.
Glugalump @ Mar 13th 2009 5:07PM
Same thing is happening to Nikon, Nikon has raised their prices twice now. It is sad. You would think that during times like this that these companies would have a different outlook.
Danny @ Mar 17th 2009 1:46AM
The news talks of employee pay cuts and everybody losing their jobs, what are they thinking? I won't be buying one any time soon.
My opinion of Ninty has gone down a lot since the love i had for gamecube.