E3: Yarnton: No Wii price cut this year

By Tom Bramwell Published 3 June, 2009

"It depends on the currency exchange."

Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton has told Eurogamer that the company will not cut the price of the Wii this year, and is unable to predict whether economic conditions will permit it to do so in 2010.

"No," he said simply when asked about cutting the GBP 179 price this year. Asked whether it might happen in 2010, he said: "We've no plans. Nintendo doesn't like selling products at a loss. We've been round for quite a long time and we're a very successful company. It depends on the currency exchange - we can't make any predictions there."

Referring to Nintendo's announcement in March that it was raising the Wii's UK trade price due to depreciation of the pound, a spokesperson added: "Due to problems with the exchange rate over the last year, we raised the cost price. Whether retailers choose to pass that cost on to customers is up to them. We have no control over what they charge for a Wii.

"Dell and Apple made similar moves recently so it's not unprecedented. The pound has fallen against the yen by 28 per cent in the last year, so every Japanese company is facing pressure at the moment."

At the time of writing, Nintendo Wii is available for between GBP 165 and GBP 180 from various UK online retailers, and, unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo has consistently declined to comment on a specific retail price for the reasons outlined above. However, the company is well known for refusing to loss-lead on hardware - the practice of selling consoles at a price lower than their production costs in order to boost the installed base and, consequently, encourage software development and sales.

Microsoft and Sony, on the other hand, frequently make announcements on price, with Microsoft in particular happy to remind anyone who will listen that it - by which it means retailers doing as suggested - sells the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU for GBP 129.99. A PlayStation 3 with a 80GB hard disk costs GBP 279.99.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Bealsy #1 3 years ago

    hardly surprising. Why cut the price of something thats making more bags of money than Mr Moneybags of Moneyville, who has a degree in moneybag making.

  • Hunam #2 3 years ago

    How about another price increase?

  • MyPointIs #3 3 years ago

    "We don't like selling at a loss" ... so other people do? who?

    When I see this arrogance it makes me look forward to the day someone else steals Nintendo's crown. Again.

    In my future there'll be now crowns for anyone. Everyone will be second place, and we'll be happy.

  • Malek86 #4 3 years ago

    I find it hard to believe that they would sell at a loss on a 150GBP or so price point.

  • MyPointIs #5 3 years ago

    @20charmax Yes, but I'm pretty sure they don't 'like' it :)
    Edited by MyPointIs at 03/06/09 @ 13:25

  • Razz #6 3 years ago

    OUTRAGE

  • stevetuck #7 3 years ago

    Everyone knows these japanese companys like to rip off the europeans :) Nintendo and Sony both do it

  • Darren #8 3 years ago

    Nintendo are greedy sods IMO. How often do we see almost three year old consoles still selling at their launch prices? I can't think of one instance myself? Sure it is good for any business to maximise their profits and keep on raking in the money but the Wii is poor value compared with the Xbox 360, which actually sells at £50 cheaper and can do a lot more out of the box like play DVDs and CDs too. The Wii should never have been more than £130 in the first place when it launched, I'm sure I only paid that for my GameCube back in 2002. Granted it never came with a game but Wii Sports is little more than an expanded tech demo anyway.

  • Darren #9 3 years ago

    @Malek86 - "I find it hard to believe that they would sell at a loss on a 150GBP or so price point."

    The Wii uses technology derived from 2002's GameCube so, like you, I find it very hard to believe that the Wii wouldn't be profitable at £100 nevermind £150 these days. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo originally wanted to sell the Wii for £130 in the UK but was met with opposition from retailers who were worried about their cut of the profit. So based on that it seems pretty clear to me that Nintendo must be making a decent cut on each Wii sold if they could have afforded to sell the machine at £50 less back in late 2006.

  • Evolution #10 3 years ago

    @Darren

    The Wii does play DVDs, you just have to be... creative :)

  • Stompy #11 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 23:13:35 17-04-2012

  • Pac #12 3 years ago

    For me it is the quality of the games that dictates whether the hardware is worth the asking price or not.

    That was OK for the Wii in the first year after launch with games like SMG and ZTP, however, I have barely touched the Wii this year (except for Little King Story).

    The 360 seems to continually have reasonably good games coming out for it, so the hardware seems fairly cheap to me.

    The PS3 on the other had seems very expensive as I have only bought a handful of titles since launch. It's lucky that Demons Souls is one the best games I have ever played or I would feel hard done by.

  • canIdoyabombsforya #13 3 years ago

    There's very few companies prepared to take the risk and design a new console these days.Thanks to Sony and Microsoft's anti-competition business practices, we are stuck in the dark ages still being told HD is the best thing since sliced bread.
    In the first generation of video games there were 100s of consoles to chose from.

    How much could we build a Wii ourselves for?

    The Gamecube tech is totally irrelavant, they still go to IBM and ATi for the main processors. One of the processors is $29, and one of the sensors in the controller is $7, Nintendo pay $20 for assembly, thats just 3 components. They didnt make an aweful lot on launch.Then there's marketing and R&D to claw back.
    It was a business risk that paid off.





  • oerhoert #14 3 years ago

    <em>"Wii Sports is little more than an expanded tech demo anyway."</em>

    Yeah ... <em>right</em> ...

    To the contrary, I'd sayWii Sports is one of the greatest titles of this console generation, making tens of millions of people smile. It's one hell of a pack-in, selling consoles in droves.

    A game doesn't necessarily have to be everlasting to be great.

    <em>"I'm pretty sure that Nintendo originally wanted to sell the Wii for £130 in the UK but was met with opposition from retailers who were worried about their cut of the profit."</em>

    I believe this was more or less the plan too, however, I do not think the retailers were Nintendo's primary concern, more that the public response at E3 and elsewhere had been enthusiastic enough for them to want to go with a higher price point as a form of testing the waters. It paid off.
    Edited by oerhoert at 07/06/09 @ 21:35