There’s three live streams about the Wii U starting in less than thirty-minutes. There’s one stream for the United States. It will have the release date, price, and launch titles for the region. There’s another for Europe with similar information. There’s also a stream for Japan which will focus on first and third-party software.
Whatever you pick, fear not: all the information will be posted to this blog.
At least one of my predictions seems to have been wrong. I expected Pikmin 3 to be a launch title for the Wii U, but in Japan at least, that’s not the case. Instead, New Super Mario Bros. U, and Nintendo Land will be the first-party launch titles. Both games will also be available as downloadable titles.
This video contains a run-down of the announcements from the latest Nintendo Direct broadcast in Japan, including the release date and price for the Wii U in the region, along with a few other details! Come back to the blog at 2pm GMT for more live streams from Nintendo that will focus on the Wii U.
Update: You can also check after the break for the full-length video of the presentation.
There are two Wii U bundles coming to Japan on December 8th. If you purchase the higher-priced “Premium” bundle, you’ll be given one year’s access to Nintendo Network Premium. Members will be provided with a 10% discount on all eShop titles. It might make eShop titles on Nintendo platforms somewhat more cost effective.
Satoru Iwata has confirmed that the Wii U’s GamePad will cost ¥13,440 in Japan. This is roughly $170 USD, which is definitely a steep price for a controller. I suspect most people will end up sticking with just the one.
Satoru Iwata has revealed that the Wii U will be available in Japan on the 8th of December. There will be two bundles available. The “Basic” bundle, which has 8GB of storage, will cost ¥26,250. This is roughly $340 USD. The “Premium” bundle, which has 32GB of storage, will cost ¥31,500, which is about $405 USD.
Nintendo has shared a few specs about the Wii U, revealing that of the system’s 2GB worth of memory, 1GB of that is designated solely for the operating system. The dimensions of the hardware were also shared, along with the capacity of the discs (25GB). There’s images after the break.