R.I.P. Wii U Basic Set - All Major Retailers in the U.S. Have Ditched Stock

[LegendofLex]

Looks like Wii U retail cuts aren’t limited to ASDA in the U.K. Now GameStop, Target, and Best Buy have stopped listing the Wii U Basic Set on their online stores. This adds more fuel to Wii U’s fire of troubles and bolsters the mounting evidence that retailers are starting to back out on Wii U in favor of other next-gen consoles.

When last we heard about this issue, Nintendo of America stated that retailers were performing a “stock rebalancing.” Based on this information and our retail sources, that seems to be a mis-characterization of the situation. It’s not that Wii U Basic Set stock is being reallocated. It’s that retailers are shoving out the Wii U Basic Set entirely.

http://gengame.net/2013/07/wii-u-basic-set-is-no-longer-sold-at-gamestop-best-buy-target-or-others/

Click the full source for retailer links if you want proof.

Do you think with Wii U's Basic Set being pushed out of the market, Nintendo will be forced to introduce a price cut to keep the system competitive against Sony and Microsoft?

 

[Ventus]

This is good to hear. This may imply that Nintendo is going to give a price cut on the Deluxe Model which, coupled with the couple of upcoming games, could give the Wii U some momentum to have a go with. I know Nintendo was strongly against any notions of price cutting, but honestly it's the only reasonable route at this point.

Sides, no one I know owns a BASIC Wii U because it BASICally sucks. ;p

 

[Salem]

So the white Wii U is gone for good? I hope not, they should release a white deluxe model, and probably more colours in general really.

 

[LegendofLex]

^ There's already a white Deluxe Set in Japan. I'm sure it'll make it here eventually.

 

[A Link In Time]

There was no purpose to the Wii U Basic Set if for $50 more you could buy a system with a bundled game and 12GB more hard drive storage.

It's a good business move by Nintendo.

 

[Ventus]

There was no purpose to the Wii U Basic Set if for $50 more you could buy a system with a bundled game and 12GB more hard drive storage.

Definitely agreed. The Basic Set was there for color purposes and nothing else. I'd love for the Wii U to come in so many different colors just like the N64 console and controllers did. That would be a dream come true. Just...don't have variances in memory.

 

[JuicieJ]

This should be a sign to Nintendo. Drop the basic set, cut the price of the deluxe set by $50, and take it from there. It'll really help in the long run, Ninty. Trust me.

 

[Ventus]

This should be a sign to Nintendo. Drop the basic set, cut the price of the deluxe set by $50, and take it from there. It'll really help in the long run, Ninty. Trust me.

$100 difference from Wii U to PS4 still isn't good enough. Cut it $100 and I think Nintendo has a deal.

 

[ILU]

Kind of figured it'd happen. I don't really know that many people who even bothered with the basic set. Maybe this will actually help them boost sales. If they want mo' monay for their consoles, then they can start offering LE sets.... LIKE ZELDA THEMED CONSOLE MEBBE?!

 

[Justac00lguy]

It needed to be done, I was pretty baffled by their inclusion of two versions at release. The Deluxe now is retailing at what the PS4 is retailing at, big problems there.

It's no lie that the Wii U is doing bad, more recently they have encountered "dire" sales with its predecessor, the Nintendo Wii, easily outselling it. The PS4 on a level pricing with the Wii U would be just awful for Nintendo. While power isn't everything, it counts, it's no lie that the PS4 has a competitive advantage over the Wii U in terms of power and features and while it may be about the games, recent trends show just how much technological power means in this rapidly advancing market.

It's not even power, it's games, the Wii U has been out for a while now and it hasn't produced that many stand out games - I would actually say that none are console sellers. While E3 offered us some more, it simply wasn't enough in my opinion in terms of quantity and quality. Sony's conference showed a stellar library which looked very intriguing and there were established series as well as great and established developers, not to mention it's third party support.

The Nintendo Wii was marketed perfectly, it was easily the cheapest option (market penetration), it had a big advantage in terms of innovation - true motion gaming was a revelation at that time - while the GamePad is a great piece of technology, I just don't feel it is on par with how revolutionary the Wii was. There's also the fact that the Wii targeted a large market being the casual family market allowing for big sales maximisation. The Wii U is hard to pin point, they seem to be casual still but yet they wanted this 3rd party support bringing in the, so called, "hardcore gamer" well sales already show**this; that typical gamer is better off going with the opposing consoles. With this in mind, I feel the Wii U is sitting in limbo trying to please to much, it's a well known thing in business that one should focus on one particular aspect for success - shown by a few theories.

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So i would feel that the Wii U at the moment is destined to fail, the only thing it can do is to lower the price and appeal to that consumer. The market is falling, people have lower incomes, it would be a perfect opportunity, I don't think $50 is enough, they need a bigger advantage.

 

[TriFiERCE]

I wonder if Atari will let them use their land fill?

 

[athenian200]

I personally like the Wii U, and I'm actually rather annoyed that people are so quick to pronounce it "dead" and a "failure." I've heard all this before with the Wii, and it was dead wrong.

There's no need to interpret this as anything other than the deluxe model selling a lot more than the basic one. It wasn't a good deal, because it was only a bit more money for a lot more memory built-in. I don't think Nintendo should have offered the basic model to begin with, because the trade-offs were not worth it, given the tendency of the market towards digital downloads and all that. That's the only mistake I feel they made here, and there's no need to read so much into this.

Nintendo's strength has never been in third-party support, and I really don't think I want them to "be like their competitors" in every regard. Some of us actually appreciate Nintendo's unique strengths and don't necessarily want to see them appeal to the bottom line like other companies do. I hope that enough people support them so that they aren't forced to "become a third-party developer" for some other system.

I don't understand the coolness and dislike people show for this system, because I really love the Gamepad, and think people should REALLY give it a chance if they enjoyed the Nintendo DS at all. The games will come, rest assured. There are a few good ones on the console already. Third-party ones at that.

 

[Salem]

The Wii supports external hard drives up to 2 Terabytes, so should Nintendo have even offered the Deluxe version at all? Just let the customer use whatever data they want, personally I think they should have made their own proprietary memory card that acts like internal storage for game saves etc and they have storage that's at least 500 Gigabytes just to much the competition.