A new round of Nintendo Wii U price cuts have been kicked off by supermarket giant Asda, with the PS4 rival now costing just £149.
The second time the retailer has slashed the Nintendo Wii U price this year, Asda has cut a further £50 off the recently released console, making the PS3 and Xbox 360 challenger and full £100 cheaper than its original pricing at launch shortly before last year’s Christmas period.
Having suffered from continually low sales figures, the Nintendo Wii U Basic model is now priced £149, with the Premium edition console, which comes with an additional controller dock and a copy of the Nintendo Land game, setting wannabe owners back £199. Having originally launched at £299, the Premium console had previously been reduced to £249 back in May.
With Nintendo confirming earlier this week that it missed annual profit targets by 50 per cent, the company’s president, Satoru Iwata, suggested that slow Wii U sales have been caused by struggles communicating the benefits of the console to consumers.
"We have not been able to solidly communicate the product value of Wii U to our consumers yet, which has been a grand challenge for us," he said.
"Some have the misunderstanding that Wii U is just Wii with a pad for games, and others even consider Wii U GamePad as a peripheral device connectable to Wii. We feel deeply responsible for not having tried hard enough to have consumers understand the product."
With Nintendo Wii U price cuts having been called for shortly after launch following unexpectedly low sales, a number of retailers previously called for Nintendo to drop its hardware prices.
Speaking back in May Jonathan Hayes, Games Buying Manager at Tesco stated: “Wii U has not caught the public’s imagination yet. [We need] a big marketing push to clearly communicate what Wii U is all about.”
His comments were echoed by the founder of Xbite Nick Whitehead who added: “Both the machine and software prices are too high to compete. The price point needs looking at but this alone will not fix the issue.”
If you’ve been left disappointed by the Nintendo Wii U, take a look at our Xbox 720 rumours roundup to see what you can expect from Microsoft’s next-gen console.
Via: CVG
