Nintendo Wii U Japan release Dec 8th, UK details later today

by Alistair Lowe on 13 September 2012, 09:18

Tags: Nintendo (TYO:7974)

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There's been a little bit of a lull when it comes to console news as of late. We all know that we won't be hearing of new PlayStations or Xboxs until sometime next year and, it has been many months since Nintendo's initial announcement of the Wii U.

To shake things up and remind us that it's still there and that it's coming, soon, Nintendo will be delivering a press-conference in New York later today, where it will reveal worldwide launch details and pricing. In the meantime, president Satoru Iwata has revealed that the console will be hitting stores in Japan on December 8th and, will retail from 26,260 yen (£210).

With Mr Iwata's announcement, a second premium black Wii U SKU was also be revealed, featuring up to 32GB of storage, up from the 8GB of the white base model, along with extra bundled peripherals and a GamePad charge stand, retailing for 31,500 yen (£250). A GamePad on its own will set one back 13,440 yen (£110).

The new GamePad and controller won't be available from release, however, pricing has been revealed for the later as well, with a Wii U pro controller available for 5,040 yen (£40). The standard Wiimote will maintain existing pricing. A GamePad charge stand will cost 1,870 yen (£15).

Nintendo has also offered a little more insight into the internals of the console, revealing that the Wii U has 2GB of RAM, with 1GB dedicated purely to gaming and the other to the OS (we suspect video/voice/text chat, background downloads etc). 1080p video output will be supported, with claims that the console features 20 times the performance of the original Wii, whilst consuming 75 watts of power. Discs will be 25GB in capacity.

When we first covered the announcement of the Wii U Miiverse back at E3, we were genuinely excited for Nintendo and the ecosystem it had created, we can only hope that consumers become equally riled-up for the console's release, which looks likely to be just-in-time for Christmas.

More to come this evening.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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£299 launch price confirmed for this gen's tech.
may have to get one on pre-order if anything was like the wii's launch….
I expect Nintendo will aim for £249 for the white 8GB, and £299 for the black 32GB then.

Does the OS really need a full GB of memory to itself? Why not 1.5GB for gaming and 512MB for the OS? Why not just stick 4GB inside and not run into memory issues at all?

Looks like half the cost is for the Gamepad - for which I have yet to see a solid selling point.
sykobee
Does the OS really need a full GB of memory to itself? Why not 1.5GB for gaming and 512MB for the OS? Why not just stick 4GB inside and not run into memory issues at all?

I wonder if an element of this is security related, given how much Nintendo have been plagued with bootleg games.
Scribe
I wonder if an element of this is security related, given how much Nintendo have been plagued with bootleg games.

I'd still be surprised if it did need up to 1GB though - I'm definitely in the camp that 512MB would be sufficient. If you think how much the 360's dashboard has evolved since launch and that had to make do with 512MB in total, what are Nintendo expecting to happen? I think Sony even reduced their XMB footprint recently too.

Edit: Do you think hardware allocated RAM comes under the OS or game RAM? I'm already cringing if they're expecting to take VRAM from the 1GB ‘game RAM’.