Nintendo Reveals Japanese Wii U Price, Launch Details

Just hours ahead of a event in New York, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced key launch details about the Wii U as part of a late-night (for us here in America, anyway) Nintendo Direct event.

The machine will launch in Japan on December 8 for in two forms. A basic set, with 8GB of memory, for 26,250 yen ($337), and a premium, black version with 32GB of memory for 31,500 yen ($405). Those yen-to-dollar conversions aren't indicative of what it will actually cost here, by the way. Expect it to be lower, and possibly with a pack-in.

Remember, Nintendo did not ship the WIi with Wii Sports in Japan.

The deluxe version also includes Nintendo Network Premium, which will provide an unspecific amount of points for purchase, and 10% back (off?) digital purchases. Nintendo Network will be available on every device, obviously.

If you want to buy a separate Wii U Game Pad, it'll cost you 13,440 yen ($172). Yeah, it's expensive, and the machine will only support two Game Pads. Again, that price will change over here. $150 sounds about right.

Several accessories were also announced, including a stand for the Game Pad.

New Super Mario Bros. U and NintendoLand will both be available at launch in digital and retail forms. In Japan, New Super Mario Bros. U will retail for about 6000 yen ($77) and Nintendo Land for about 5000 yen ($64). It's easy to imagine that being $60 and $50 over here, but who knows? Maybe lower?

More details on Wii U launch software is being saved for the other event later today.

Iwata went over some basic specifications inside Wii U, but in typical Nintendo fashion, the company left plenty for people to speculate about. The machine supports outputs up to 1080p, and uses a "GPGPU." (No, I don't know what that means, either.) There's 2GB of memory within the system--1GB system memory, 1GB game memory. Finally, Wii U's game discs can feature up to 25GB.

In just a few hours, we'll know more. Another streaming event from Japan will go over more launch software, and there's the completely separate event in New York, too. Madness!

(Thanks to 8-4 Play's John Ricciardi and NeoGAF member Cheesemeister for play-by-play translation of the event.)

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY FIVE US DOLLARS

... for a second game pad thing.

crazytown

My, hopefully those prices are lower for us red blooded Americans.

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE US DOLLARS

Am I doing it rite?

I can't wait to see the details for the US launch. Hope it's much cheaper.

2gb ram, with only 1 usable by devs.

:I

That is fairly pricy for a somewhat gimmicky system...interesting to see the USD price.

GPGPU is a General Purpose GPU. In games, that basically means Physicssssss. Or, if you prefer, PhysX.

I'm curious if there might be a third SKU for America with a reasonable harddrive, or maybe just changing the harddrives in the existing SKUs. Japan might not be ready to fill up an 8 or 32GB harddrive, but America sure as fuck is. I suppose there's not much point in speculating when the American details will be out in like six hours.

So, I'm guessing $300 for US.

Given how strong the Yen is and typical higher media prices in Japan, I think US$250 and $300 is a lock at this point.

The extra tablet is appropriately expensive. Nintendo was not going to sell a second one (or any accessory) and not make a hefty profit out of it.

$150 for a controller is the price I knew in my heart, but I was hoping for a clean $100.

I wouldn't be surprised at $350/$400 in the US, but if they're going to be aggressive, and they want to move units around Thanksgiving (which is when I expect it launches), they go with $250/$300.

Five hundred ninety-nine US dollars.

I think $350 for the Premium bundle is a safer bet.

Looking forward to the US price. Only a few hours away. I really should go to bed, it's 2:45 am here already and this thing starts at 9 am my time.

I hope y'all are right about a $300 SKU for U.S. If not, this thing is sunk.

That said, if it's $300 for the premium model as @Eribuster suggested, then they're gonna sell a lot of Wii U's, and I don't necessarily have to prepare for a future where Microsoft offers the cheaper console at $500.

@patrickklepek said:

I wouldn't be surprised at $350/$400 in the US, but if they're going to be aggressive, and they want to move units around Thanksgiving (which is when I expect it launches), they go with $250/$300.

Even at 350/400 USD, I bet Nintendo can coast through the American Holiday season with ease. Enough parents (and older dedicated Nintendo faithful) would shell out for Nintendo's new box. I would not be surprised to see an initial high price (see above) and a price cut a few months later (a la 3DS).

@Indiana_Jenkins said:

$150 for a controller is the price I knew in my heart, but I was hoping for a clean $100.

Agreed. I think it will drop quickly though. Who knows, it may even be closer to $125 just to appear competitive. Since $150 would be just $50 shy of a full 3D system; People aren't going to miss that detail if the predicted price is correct.

@patrickklepek said:

I wouldn't be surprised at $350/$400 in the US, but if they're going to be aggressive, and they want to move units around Thanksgiving (which is when I expect it launches), they go with $250/$300.

With Reggie's comments recently about how the public will be "pleasantly surprised" by the Wii U price, I think it has to be $300. If it's $400 after he says that, I think he and Nintendo look like idiots.

If the premium version is $300 I may seriously consider buying one.  
 
32gb isn't a lot though, so I wonder how the storage on it works.

How is 8GB enough to download digital games, assuming that there will be a service even remotely similar to games on demand? (NSMB and nintendoland available in digital and retail forms)

Even with the America discount those prices are still excessive for hardware that isn't much better than the current generation of consoles.

Also 32GB is the "premium" memory package? Obviously they've decided this digital games thing is just a fad...

@Vinny_Says: For retail games, yeah, it's not great. You can expand the memory size with SD cards and USB flash drives.

@RecSpec said:

If the premium version is $300 I may seriously consider buying one. 32gb isn't a lot though, so I wonder how the storage on it works.

USB hard drive.

The prices you quoted include tax.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/2012/120913.html

GPGPU basically means that the GPU will also do the job of the CPU. Maybe the Wii U won't have a CPU at all, or the GPU might just be assisting the CPU (which means they can afford to put a lousier CPU in there).

I'm not the least bit interested in the Wii U but this is still kind of exciting. It's been a long ass time since we've had new console hardware. Next year is going to be nuts.

Ooooh. December 8th. I am gonna guess they launch November 18th here in the US. They put out the Wii on the 16th and it came out in Japan the 2nd of December. They have to get it into stores for Black Friday and have it sell as long as possible before x-mas. This is gonna be tight but I think the pricing should be ok. Except for the wii tablet thing. I think 100 bucks is the sweet spot for it.

@Vinny_Says said:

How is 8GB enough to download digital games, assuming that there will be a service even remotely similar to games on demand? (NSMB and nintendoland available in digital and retail forms)

they basically expect you to use an external HDD or SDHC cards to expand your storage.

BUT the good thing is, Nintendo only ever uses flash memory, not standard hard drives (= faster accces).

Btw, how can you leave out the most important bit: THE SYSTEM COMES WITH AN HDMI CABLE! woohooo WE'RE IN TEH FUTURE! :D

I'm going to guess 300$ and 350$ (w/ hard-drive) equivalents at the very most in the US. Japan is really being gouged across the board with tech it seems (to the point where they had to add region locking to P4A in the US version because of the massive difference in price; and lets not even talk about anime pricing). It's only expected it'll be cheaper here.

I'd like to think they would try to hit that 250$ price point again, but those gamepads are much beefier than the wiimotes ever were. Not throwing out the possibility though; they'd knock it out of the ballpark if they could afford to do that.

copied my full list from the wiki:

"Basic" SKU (White)

• 8GB internal flash storage (can be expanded with up to 128GB SDHC cards or up to 3TB external USB hard drives)
• Wii U GamePad (White)
• Wii U GamePad Stylus (White)
• Wii U Console AC Adapter
• Wii U GamePad AC Adapter
• HDMI cable
• Price: ¥26,250

"Premium" SKU (Black)

• 32GB internal flash storage (can be expanded with up to 128GB SDHC cards or up to 3TB external USB hard drives)
• Wii U GamePad (Black)
• Wii U GamePad Stylus (Black)
• Wii U GamePad charging stand
• Wii U GamePad stand
• Wii U Console vertical stand
• Wii U Console AC Adapter
• Wii U GamePad AC Adapter
• HDMI cable
• Nintendo Network Premium: 500 Club Nintendo points + 10% off digital purchases until December 2014
• Price: ¥31,500

Wii Accessory Bundle

• Wii Remote Plus
• Nunchuck
• Wii Sensor Bar
• Price: ¥5,250

Wow, that's an expensive controller. I know it does a lot more than a normal controller, but that's going to be a hard sell for a lot of people. The price in the US probably won't be $170, but it's still going to be really expensive (my rough guess is $100-120). And I was hesitant to buy a PS3 controller for $40...

Saying 'A basic set, with 8GB of memory, for 26,250 yen ($337), and a premium, black version with 32GB of memory for 31,500 yen ($405)" is bloody confusing. You mean storage, not memory.

2GB memory? Fuuuuuck old hardware is old.

Also those prices equate to £209-251. Watch the prices go down to $300-350 in the US and up in the UK to £250-300. We will get shafted as usual!

@Chavtheworld said:

2GB memory? Fuuuuuck old hardware is old.

2GB console RAM is what this is. Remember how the PS3/360 only have 512MB? It certainly isn't phenomenal and the other new systems will very likely have more but come on now. 2Gig of RAM for a console is still a lot these days!

For $150 I could almost buy a Nexus 7 - a real ass tablet with it's own cpu, more storage than the Wii U console itself, tonnes of free games. Who is this console for again?

Well screw buying an extra Game Pad, damn! I don't know now, I was actually pretty excited for it all, but all of it seems a bit much. I mean, if a premium is 400 dollars... Ughhh. I just don't know. Either Nintendo has something really exciting to announce, or they just don't know how to price things correctly, from what I can tell so far. I'm still excited though, and I want to see where all this is heading. At least there'll be two, now that I just re-read it. I guess I missed a few points in there.

I'm guessing 300/350. $299 for a new console isn't bad and they'll have room for price drops in the future.

@DeF said:

@Chavtheworld said:

2GB memory? Fuuuuuck old hardware is old.

2GB console RAM is what this is. Remember how the PS3/360 only have 512MB? It certainly isn't phenomenal and the other new systems will very likely have more but come on now. 2Gig of RAM for a console is still a lot these days!

But still, fuuuuuuuck. Also comparing it to the PS3/360 which are ancient isn't gunna do it any favours.

I'm very curious if this will tank or not.

Will be interested to see what the Australian prices will be. Guessing at least $200 for the controller, maybe 500 for the console.

Hardware/Software prices are always much higher in Japan, I wouldn't freak out about it until the US/European announcements.

This will totally,cost upwards of $800 in Australia won't it. :( .

Nintendo is out of their fucking mind if they think they can charge that here.

wii eww