Nintendo Australia announced today that it will slash $100 off the price of its flagship Wii console from $399.95 to $299.95, effective tomorrow, 29th April.
This is the first price cut for the Nintendo Wii in Australia since its local launch in December 2006. 1.79 million consoles have been sold in Australia since the launch date. In the past the console came bundled with games and/or peripherals to make it more attractive to consumers.
The Australian price cut comes seven months after the USA and European price drop to US$199.99 (A$217.66 under current exchange rates) and EUR199 (A$285.70) respectively in September 2009. Another Wii price cut has already been called for by analyst, Mike Hickey, who would like to the see the US price cut to US$150.
The Wii price cut coincides with the release of Capcom’s fantasy game Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii, available for purchase bundled with the new Classic Controller Pro. Consoles and the Classic Controller Pro would be available in the original white casing and in the new black casing. Monster Hunter Tri will offer online play and speech capability with other players utilising the Wii Speak Accessory.
The Monster Hunter Tri release on the Wii is a first for the Monster Hunter series in western countries, the first Monster Hunter game was released on the Sony PlayStation 2 with subsequent games in the series released on PS2, PSP and PC. An impending rehash of the PC title, Monster Hunter Frontier, is to be released for the 360 XBox Live this year. Monster Hunter Frontier was first released in 2007 on PC’s and wasn’t widely available to western consumers.
The Monster Hunter franchise is immensely popular in Japan, Monster Hunter 3’s Japanese release in August 2009 sent it rocketing to the top of Japan’s sales charts. Sales of the Wii quadrupled that week in Japan when the Monster Hunter 3 release coincided with the launch of the black Wii.
Image credit: Nintendo
This goes well with the Technology tax opinion piece. Games related stuff has always been affected by the tax, and Region-coding of games makes it annoying to import software or hardware, but you can still get 50% discounts if you know what you’re doing.
The thing I find with games is, if you wait like 2-3 months after they are released, you can get massive discounts. Not only on places like Steam, but also from EBGames as people finish the hyped games and trade them in, or as the retailer itself puts the new games on special to get rid of stock.
There are only a limited amount of games publishers whose stuff is so good I would buy it on day 1. Blizzard, Valve, CliffyB. That’s about it.
I do the same thing with big releases, wait a few months then grab the game when it is cheaper. Especially in our household where we have 2×360 consoles, so we require 2 copies of the game if it has mulit player or co-op.
The other option is http://www.fishpond.com.au/ or certain other international sites that sell the games at low low prices.
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