With that expensive-looking tablet controller, Wii U seems like a lock to cost more than Wii did at launch. Nintendo didn’t say anything of the sort during its E3 media briefing yesterday morning, and it actually glossed over the entire subject of pricing — an understandable decision, as the system may not be out for another 17 months.
That doesn’t mean that everyone at Nintendo has opted to ignore the subject. President Satoru Iwata said in an interview with Nikkei (as translated by Andriasang) that the company does not intend to sell Wii U for the same 20,000 yen ($250) price that Wii did at launch. He also believes Wii can continue to live on for a period of time following the release of U.
Without knowing the exact components that make up the new system and its controller, it’s impossible to precisely say how much Nintendo will pay to produce each system. $300 seems like a low-end estimate for what consumers will be paying at this point; between the system, its controller, and Nintendo’s insistence upon making a profit out of the gate, it probably won’t end up costing any less than that.
