Wii buyers follow French Connection for consoles
How much? Sacre bleu...
If you’re after a Nintendo Wii this Christmas then you’d better get your credit card out - and maybe start brushing up your French too.
A report by the Daily Mirror claims that British shoppers are donning their best French accents and sailing over to Calais, where the console’s reportedly ready to be had for just £150 (€210/$300).
A spokesman for Calais store Micromania told the paper: "English interest is phenomenal." It's having to limit Wiis to one per customer, the Mirror claimed.
In the UK, though, websites such as eBay have the console listed for sale with prices ranging from around £300 (€420/$600) to £1000 (€1300/$2000).
One intrepid seller hoping to offload his Wii for £1m may be slightly overestimating the price people are willing to pay to get their hands on one of the consoles this Christmas though.
What would you pay for a Wii?
Alternatively, some companies with stocks of the console are targeting gamers by email, but with hugely inflated prices. For example, dealer CPC sent Register Hardware reader Walter a "December Deal" email offering the console for £352 - without any games other than the standard Wii Sports bundle.
The 'standard' UK price suggested by Nintendo is £180.
At least CPC's throwing in free postage...
COMMENTS
At last some payback
for all you Euros and Merkins getting the best of everything! Come on down to sunny 'STRAYA for Nintendo deals!
$399 Australian which works out to £171. W00T! The shelves here are full of the things, too. Sure they are selling a lot, but there is plenty of stock.
Now here's my plan:
1. Buy Wii
2. Find UK-based numpties
3. ...
4. PROFIT!
Seriously
The top 10 Christmas toy list is released in the summer (August I think), with the wii in there (dunno where it came on the list this year). In the summer there was easy availability (or enough time to pre-order), and as a parent you could guess that your kids (or you) might want one and they would be scarce at Christmas, so if you are complaining about not being able to find one for your kids or not wanting to pay twice the price, it is there for partially your own fault for being disorganised, (personally i waited till January this year to pre-order and it came in 5 )
"Or you could... "
Spot on. From our experience, Argos are brilliant with their stock reservation if you go in-store, and also have plenty of games at little over half the price of anywhere else. Why are people prepared to risk eBay and dodgy importers, where it's going to take a week to enter the lottery of getting something at an inflated price, when they can probably get it in a couple of days, at RRP, on the high street?
not worth THAT amount of money
hey, I bought a Wii in spring of this year - after controlling my urge to buy for for christmas LAST year - i said ' nope, get one when its freely available' - there were reasonably available for RRP + some special game bundle offers for the period april - june - then things went silly again.
people, just wait until after christmas. the Wii is a great console..and some good games. but it is not worth 300 quid.
yes, its worth 180, but for 300? well, with argos discount voucher + offer i got a 60Gb PS3 for 300 quid. i could have got a decent xbox360 setup too - those ARE both worth 300 quid - with HD playback, more 'advanced' games and better output. the Wii is a great 'fun game' system.
if you REALLY want to sink into some great Nintendo gameplay then get a gamecube + 10 games - that'll set you back around 100 quid from gamestation - and will be an ideal stop-gap until Wii is available - as the games are all Wii precusors too - metroid prime 1 & 2, Zelda Windwaker, Paper Mario, Super Mario Sunshine, Resident Evil 4 etc etc
Wii Warranty
@steogede:
Yes they have European warranties, the first section of the manual is in english and has the full UK warranty details and specifically says it is a 24 month warranty.
The only thing to watch out for is that the warranty is void should the products have been resold privately. Therefore eBay purchases will NOT be warrantied unless you are buying from a shop selling on eBay.
