Speculating on the Wii U

Written by Erik Kubik, kube00 Friday, 04 May 2012 06:00

The Wii U is coming out later this year and the rumor mill has been churning. Nintendo has been pretty mum about the price and the official launch date according to IGN. But there are two question I think gamers should really consider, how much is the system going to cost and what will gamers get with it?

The rumored price for the Wii U is $350 and the console should come out this holiday season. Nintendo would be smart to put out the console at $250-$300. The cheapest PS3, the 120 GB model is $250, and the cheapest 360, the 4GB model is $200. I'm sure after E3 Sony will drop the price on the PS3, and who knows maybe Microsoft will knock the 360 down to $175. Maybe gamers will see fantastic holiday bundles from both companies.

If the Wii U is priced at $350 this could give the Wii U a disadvantage. Developers are still going to be cranking out PS3/360 games. Why buy a new system when gamers can get the latest games for something they already have? And if they don't have a PS3/360 what is going to make them want to buy a more expensive Wii U?

At $350 the Wii U needs to hit the ground running. To sell strong over the holidays Nintendo will need a few good pack-in games. They will need a strong first party game at launch. Ideally Mario or Zelda would be perfect, pack this in with another game, and make the whole package $350. Something like this would guarantee sales.

IGN has another interesting article discussing the size of Wii, 3DS, and 360 games and IGN speculates about the Wii U’s storage system. If the games are anywhere close to the size of the 360’s games at 4-8GB a system that uses SD cards won’t be enough. What about downloadable Wii/GC games and all downloadable games on the Nintendo Channel? Nintendo has announced they will support an external drive through USB. The Wii U needs a hard drive, and we need to ask how much will Nintendo charge for something like this? Will they go the way of Sony and make it easy to upgrade HD sizes?

If anything I hope Nintendo has some news for interested gamers before E3. I really hope there’s a bundle and several strong titles to accompany the launch of the system. Hopefully Nintendo learned from the launch of the 3DS.