Poor pound ups Wii's trade price
Gamers facing ten per cent price hike
UK gamers could soon be forced to fork out a little extra for a new Wii, if Nintendo’s recently upped trade price for the console is passed on to consumers by retailers.
The gaming giant told website MCV that the current economic environment has forced it to up the price it sell the Wii to UK retailers for. It’s rumoured the price paid by traders could increase by about £16.50, or £18.98 ($26/€20) including VAT.
“Due to the severe and continuing depreciation of the pound, we are, unfortunately, having to raise our trade price to UK retailers of Wii hardware,” a Nintendo UK spokesperson said.
If traders are hit with a £19 increase in the cost of a Wii and that rise is subsequently passed to consumers, then the average cost of the console would rise from around £180 to £199 ($274/€215) - an increase of just over ten per cent.
Whether retailers will pass the price hike on remains to be seen, but consoles already carry notoriously narrows margins as it is – making the possibility of a Wii retail price rise all the more likely. ®
COMMENTS
Headline prices won't increase...
... but the retail bundles will become less extensive, more constrained and/or include more worthless sports accessory twaddle to "make up".
exchange rate nonsense
the price hikes on lots of products (apple) have nothing to do with the exchange rate. these are global companies, making profits globally. this exchange rate nonsense is a way to increase profits through sustained demand ie. mr joe public will still keep buying them and any slight decrease in sales can be balanced by bigger profits.
move on people.
This could go down...
... as one of the bigger mistakes in console history.
Imagine scenario ... you're trouncing the competition in console sales (let's leave the attach rate debate for another day) and remarkably you are actually making a profit on the console itself ... what better way to fuck that all up than to hike the price in a market where people are already cutting back?
Let's not even get into the fact that, at current exchange rates, the going rate in the US and Japan (when comparing prices on amazon.co.uk, .com and .co.jp) seems to be near enough dead-on the price presently being paid by UK consumers.
