Shoppers face paying up to £20 more for a Wii in UK, Nintendo says its unfortunate

[Zeus]

UK tabloid 'The Sun' is reporting that UK shoppers face the possibility of paying up to £20 more for a Wii than they should as Nintendo has upped the trade prices. Robert Saunders of Nintendo UK called the possibility of a price increase as unfortunate and blamed currency fluctuations during the economic crisis at the moment for the price hike.



SHOPPERS face paying up to £20 more for a Nintendo Wii console after the Japanese firm hiked its prices.

It is now charging stores more for the best-selling machines due to the crumbling economy and plummeting Pound.

The Wii currently sells for £179.99 but high street and web retailers could pass on the rise to customers to maintain their profits.

Robert Saunders, of Nintendo UK, called it “unfortunate”, blaming “extreme currency fluctuations during the global economic situation”.

He added the firm could not legally impose a RRP.


News Source: <A href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2316852.ece" target="_blank">TheSun</a>

[Eggman72]

Were always fucked over here in the UK so this makes no difference....they wanna get some 1st party games out for the **** once again turning into the console ninty forgot...

[sped]

Just goes to show a console selling as well as it should in the uk doesnt get cheaper, instead what happends........People in the uk gets screwed and have to pay more!! I think soon as they put the price up people will turn to the xbox 360 or the ps3. Nintendo........STOP BEEN GREEDY!!

[EL_CAD]

The UK currency has tanked. At the current rate the dollar will be worth 1 pound by May. Not that the dollar is doing all that good but in comparison to pound it's doing great. With a currency this weakened you going to start to have some real problems to worry about other then the price of video games.

Last March 1 pound was worth 2 dollars, but earlier this month it was only worth a dollar and 30 cents. That's a 35% drop in value.

[Mithos]

The current price for a "Wii with WiiSports" in Sweden is: $us 300-375, depending on where you pick it up.

[tech3475]

I would have thought most wii users buy a wii for one thing, Wii Sports!

Therefore they have to make a profit on EVERY unit, unlike the old shaver and razor model (which I believe Nintendo have done ever since the NES until now).

So with lower profit per unit, nintendo want to make more MONEY!

Good thing I got mine when I did (back when gamers thought there would be less **** for it).

[sigma8]

Were always fucked over here in the UK so this makes no difference....they wanna get some 1st party games out for the **** once again turning into the console ninty forgot...

Seriously STFU. For many years, simply stepping foot in your country has been a financial F.U. to pretty much anybody else on the planet. Your prices and taxes are outrageous. Dinner at a pub there is like twice what it costs here.

And that's not Nintendo's fault. Or America's fault. Blame your government and whoever else makes your fish and chips and tandoori dinners.

I was in the Middle of Nowhere, UK.. and prices were still insane. Beans on toast was like 4£. That's a slice of bread with beans on it. You were charging $7 USD for a freaking slice of bread with some baked beans on it. $7 here gets you a fairly large and/or high-end sandwich.

This was at a small, extremely unfancy cafe. Maybe being in the Middle of Nowhere drives up prices? I was hoping that was the case, but then when I got to London and everything was yet more expensive, I sadly realized it wasn't the case.

[EL_CAD]

I would have thought most wii users buy a wii for one thing, Wii Sports!

Therefore they have to make a profit on EVERY unit, unlike the old shaver and razor model (which I believe Nintendo have done ever since the NES until now).

So with lower profit per unit, nintendo want to make more MONEY!

Good thing I got mine when I did (back when gamers thought there would be less **** for it).

The average Wii owner has bought 8 games. So for every person who just gets Wii Sports there is another who has bought 16 games.

[ThreeDog]

Seriously STFU. For many years, simply stepping foot in your country has been a financial F.U. to pretty much anybody else on the planet. Your prices and taxes are outrageous. Dinner at a pub there is like twice what it costs here.

And that's not Nintendo's fault. Or America's fault. Blame your government and whoever else makes your fish and chips and tandoori dinners.

I was in the Middle of Nowhere, UK.. and prices were still insane. Beans on toast was like 4£. That's a slice of bread with beans on it. You were charging $7 USD for a freaking slice of bread with some baked beans on it. $7 here gets you a fairly large and/or high-end sandwich.

This was at a small, extremely unfancy cafe. Maybe being in the Middle of Nowhere drives up prices? I was hoping that was the case, but then when I got to London and everything was yet more expensive, I sadly realized it wasn't the case.

If you're dumb enough to pay £4 for beans on toast then you obviously don't have the backbone to say anything about it, see most of us with brains would turn around and walk straight out of there and make it ourselves for less than £1.
Being in the middle of nowhere is a good reason for exploitation but you go from one extreme to the other london is not cheap by any means you may even pay 20% more at mcdonalds just to sit down it is a busy city. In london its a case of finding a little cafe that isn't doing so good against all the competition on every block for a cheaper "hey come in here" price.

This applies to nintendo too, when the GC was around and microsoft realised the price of xbox was way too high, slashed the price in half and offered rebates to those that bought a short time beforehand, nintendo slashed the price of GC by a large amount, they didn't offer a thing and got themselves record fine.
The point is if you don't complain nothing changes, you may say that we should blame our government but nintendo has forced the price to stay high, nintendo has been involved with sharp in DS screen price fixing (allegedly), nintendo put £50 on the DSI price for upgrades that cost £2 max.

Our government cut VAT from 17.5% to 15% so stores passed on the discount, did nintendo cut the DS inc VAT price? did they cut the wii VAT price? did they f*** the wii still costs £180 the ds £100 and that was before the currency went to sh**, that actually means they earn more per sale thankyou, so is it still not nintendo's fault? :p

[BladeX]

u think your fucked in the uk you should see what we have to pay here in Australia.

[Spud_Hed]

well with the way the pound has bombed and the usual rip off were accustomed to im hardly surprised, but itll do only one thing, and thats make the 360 look that much more attractive, with a £20 increase on the wii puts it at £190 (which they will happily round up to a nice £199.99) whereas the 360 can be had for £130 or even less at times. so if nowhere else it looks like m$ will win out in europe (seems the 360 is the new mega drive) if they were to drop the 360 another 30 quid to a round ton itd sell like hot cakes despite the hardware gripes

[Tridek2]

Yeah, you know. Because the Wii's price is totally lower than it's hardware price. Nintendo are losing soooo much money every time they sell a Wii, so I completely understand the need for raising (wtf?) their console price.

[billysastard]

may i be the first to congratulate microsoft on overtaking the wii in month on month sales, whilst there was only a £10 difference between the wii and 360 pro the wii could hold its own without trouble but with a £30 difference i think its game microsoft (at least till nintendo drops the wii to £150 just before xmas;) )

[sbanting]

hehe, people that talk about currency when they have no idea, for the last month, the pound verus the dollar has stayed at a steady 0.7 pound to the dollar. Right now its 0.691, so I can't see that a steady rate is some how getting worse...

I thought Nintendo were raising the price of the console, not just for the UK, if it is just for the uk, that doesn't really make sence as people will just get a cheaper 360 instead. I can't see how the whole world is in a ressesion yet the UK gets screwed over again, thank goodness I already own all the consoles :D

[Hyperion]

I think this is totally fair.

Like when they dropped the price when the pound got you 2 US$...

Oh wait!

[harryisme]

I think this is totally fair.

Like when they dropped the price when the pound got you 2 US$...

Oh wait!

LOL, exactly, the Nintendo Wii has been overpriced since the beginning, It's a whole £50 more expensive that the 360 Arcade, at the moment, if the retailers do indeed pass on the extra cost to the consumers then it will be on par with the Xbox360 Elite model, which if certain places are selling for £190 at the moment.

They charged £180 when it was $2 to £1, making it $360US, and now if the price goes up by £20, it will be $280, still more expensive than the US.

Hopefully this isn't a sign for things to come otherwise the UK economy is totally screwed.

[Spud_Hed]

the problem is not really about the £ against the $ but the fact that the £ to yen rate has become so bad, for years it was pretty much steady at around 200 yen to the £ but over the last year its bombed to around 130 to the £

[EL_CAD]

hehe, people that talk about currency when they have no idea, for the last month, the pound verus the dollar has stayed at a steady 0.7 pound to the dollar. Right now its 0.691, so I can't see that a steady rate is some how getting worse...
Sure the last month it's stable. Here someone drew a picture of the value of the pound in US dollars:

http://forecasts.org/images/exchange-rate/pound.gif


I guess I had no clue what I was talking about.:rolleyes:

[Appleseed]

Oh the pain, do you KNOW how much it costs to buy megashares, megaupload and rapidshare nowadays?

a friendof mine used to buy them all the time, but now my friend has to think twice about buying them.

It hurts my friend to think, much less think TWICE.

DAMN YOU AMERICAN WARS. DAMN YOU STUPID GOVERNMENTS.

[mxnrob]

That is harsh, hopefully most of you beat this price increase :)

[sigma8]

If you're dumb enough to pay £4 for beans on toast then you obviously don't have the backbone to say anything about it, see most of us with brains would turn around and walk straight out of there and make it ourselves for less than £1.
Your retort is well-taken. The reason I paid it was because I wanted hot food. I was working on-site at a dig. It's not like I was chillin' at home and saying "Hey, I feel like eating out."


its a case of finding a little cafe that isn't doing so good against all the competition on every block for a cheaper "hey come in here" price.

This applies to nintendo too, when the GC was around and microsoft realised the price of xbox was way too high, slashed the price in half and offered rebates ...

The point is if you don't complain nothing changes, you may say that we should blame our government but nintendo has forced the price to stay high, nintendo has been involved with sharp in DS screen price fixing (allegedly), nintendo put £50 on the DSI price for upgrades that cost £2 max.

Our government cut VAT from 17.5% to 15% so stores passed on the discount, did nintendo cut the DS inc VAT price? did they cut the wii VAT price? did they f*** the wii still costs £180 the ds £100 and that was before the currency went to sh**, that actually means they earn more per sale thankyou, so is it still not nintendo's fault? :p

I'm not saying Nintendo is completely blameless for everything ever. Sony killed the Dreamcast with false hype and lies, and continues to fight a bitter struggle against PSP homebrewers. Then they teamed up with Google yesterday to push open-standards ebook formats, and ponied up nearly a half million public-domain works, neatly converted into the non-proprietary ePub format. Microsoft intentionally put code into MS-DOS that broke third-party memory managers that were competing with them. Then they saved Apple's a**.

Nintendo has done many, many evil things. Raising their price because your currency is starting to suck isn't something I'd number among them.

And sure, if the Wii was selling horribly, they probably wouldn't have raised the price. However, that means that they'd be happy to absorb the loss. The way they're raising their price right now is to maintain their margins, not increase them. Of course, it's not like your currency has dropped 20£ in one day. Obviously, over time, Nintendo has been shaving off profit margins on UK sales, which has been impacting their profitability at home due to the foreign currency exchange. They're now recalibrating.

And yes, certainly they are only recalibrating because they can. If the Wii was selling like crap, you'd probably get a price drop no how well or poorly your economy was doing. MS priced the Xbox360 extremely competitive in Japan. Far more so than its home territory. They're willing to take a bigger loss there to shove their foot in the door.

[sigma8]

the problem is not really about the £ against the $ but the fact that the £ to yen rate has become so bad, for years it was pretty much steady at around 200 yen to the £ but over the last year its bombed to around 130 to the £

Yeah.. I love how everyone is all "dollars dollars dollars" when we're talking about a UK -> Japan conversion.

Dollars are absolutely meaningless in this discussion.

[sigma8]

I think this is totally fair.

Like when they dropped the price when the pound got you 2 US$...

Oh wait!

USD is irrelevant. It's a Japanese company. How was the yen doing then? Also: the price you've been paying was the price set at launch. Did the yen drop a ton against the pound since launch?

Finally, it's sad, but I think it'd be extremely rare for a company to reduce the price of something because their own currency has dropped. If it's selling like hotcakes in the UK at 179£, so well they can't even keep them on shelves, why drop the price for any reason?

Also, I went to a historical currency conversion site, here's how much YEN Nintendo was making at various launch prices:
japan ¥25,000 ( ¥25,000 )
USA $249 ( ¥29,332 )
UK £179 ( ¥39,950 )
EU €249 ( ¥37,622 )

In the USA, prices don't include any kind of tax. Actual sale price would have ranged from $249 ( ¥29,332 ) - $273(ish) ( ¥32,160 ). I'm not sure how the taxes on sales in Europe & UK work for consumer electronics (all I bought over there was food and clothes, which if it's like here, may be taxed at different rates).

[EL_CAD]

USD is irrelevant. It's a Japanese company. How was the yen doing then? Also: the price you've been paying was the price set at launch. Did the yen drop a ton against the pound since launch?

Finally, it's sad, but I think it'd be extremely rare for a company to reduce the price of something because their own currency has dropped. If it's selling like hotcakes in the UK at 179£, so well they can't even keep them on shelves, why drop the price for any reason?

Also, I went to a historical currency conversion site, here's how much YEN Nintendo was making at various launch prices:
japan ¥25,000 ( ¥25,000 )
USA $249 ( ¥29,332 )
UK £179 ( ¥39,950 )
EU €249 ( ¥37,622 )

In the USA, prices don't include any kind of tax. Actual sale price would have ranged from $249 ( ¥29,332 ) - $273(ish) ( ¥32,160 ). I'm not sure how the taxes on sales in Europe & UK work for consumer electronics (all I bought over there was food and clothes, which if it's like here, may be taxed at different rates).

The USD is the benchmark.

[Hyperion]

Yeah.. I love how everyone is all "dollars dollars dollars" when we're talking about a UK -> Japan conversion.

Dollars are absolutely meaningless in this discussion.

Most international business is conducted in US dollars, REGARDLESS of the home currency of either party!

To show there're no hard feelings, I enclose this cluepon.

http://www.keshertalk.com/images/blogpix/cluepon.jpg

[n0rthstar]

Yeah, you know. Because the Wii's price is totally lower than it's hardware price. Nintendo are losing soooo much money every time they sell a Wii, so I completely understand the need for raising (wtf?) their console price.

So why not raise it in other countries too then, why just the UK? What you just said makes no sense at all.

And the aussies also take it up the ringhole too as BladeX said.

[n0rthstar]

Yeah.. I love how everyone is all "dollars dollars dollars" when we're talking about a UK -> Japan conversion.

Dollars are absolutely meaningless in this discussion.

Thats incorrect.

The USA is a big country that drives the economy to what it has become right now, thats why the Pound in struggling, its a knock on effect.

Its a world recession thats affecting every country, and America plays a big role in that recession. You dont have to take my word for it, you can read about it anywhere and everywhere, Google is a good place to start, and heres a tip where to start with Google... American Banks.

In my (unexpert) opinion there is just too many damn people on this planet and its just getting worse as time goes by... soon there wont be enough food to feed everyone, we'll become a 3rd world planet and maybe start eating eachother.

[*StoneCold*]

may i be the first to congratulate microsoft on overtaking the wii in month on month sales, whilst there was only a £10 difference between the wii and 360 pro the wii could hold its own without trouble but with a £30 difference i think its game microsoft (at least till nintendo drops the wii to £150 just before xmas;) )

The 360s sales in Britain is no where near the Wii's, the wii is still kicking the 360s teeth in, so dont spread bs as if its true when its not.

This is a bs story too.

Anywhere you go to buy a wii, i.e Smyths, you get it for £170, this price increase wont make 1 shred of difference, the price to us wont go up.

[EL_CAD]

The 360s sales in Britain is no where near the Wii's, the wii is still kicking the 360s teeth in, so dont spread bs as if its true when its not.

This is a bs story too.

Anywhere you go to buy a wii, i.e Smyths, you get it for £170, this price increase wont make 1 shred of difference, the price to us wont go up.

He's right Asda list it as £172, which equals $252. Where is the "£" on my keyboard?

[ThreeDog]

USD is irrelevant. It's a Japanese company. How was the yen doing then? Also: the price you've been paying was the price set at launch. Did the yen drop a ton against the pound since launch?

Finally, it's sad, but I think it'd be extremely rare for a company to reduce the price of something because their own currency has dropped. If it's selling like hotcakes in the UK at 179£, so well they can't even keep them on shelves, why drop the price for any reason?

Also, I went to a historical currency conversion site, here's how much YEN Nintendo was making at various launch prices:
japan ¥25,000 ( ¥25,000 )
USA $249 ( ¥29,332 )
UK £179 ( ¥39,950 )
EU €249 ( ¥37,622 )

In the USA, prices don't include any kind of tax. Actual sale price would have ranged from $249 ( ¥29,332 ) - $273(ish) ( ¥32,160 ). I'm not sure how the taxes on sales in Europe & UK work for consumer electronics (all I bought over there was food and clothes, which if it's like here, may be taxed at different rates).

I liked your reply it was well thought out i also understand you cannot pick and choose when on the job in an isolated place, still £4 for beans on toast id imagine a full english would cost £8 there?

So right from launch nintendo possibly made the most money from the Brit market assuming the money goes to nintendo of japan?
Add to that most sites unwillingness to drop the price of wii below £180 due to VAT cuts i wonder if this is nintendo policy or to sell more game bundles?

Investigating further if we're to assume nintendo does take all money earned in the uk to nintendo of japan then consider that the consoles get shipped from said region, right now £179 = ¥25,517 then on import there's also a fee to enter the market on any item over £18 (Item cost + shipping) x (Import Duty Rate % (normally £10-15 per item)) x (15% adjusted VAT) an extra £20 would still mean nintendo potentially now earns the least from the uk market assuming other regions currency values stayed the same.

I guess i will convert to the fact this isn't nintendos fault but rather market circumstances causing problems.