Nintendo Will Cut UK Wii Price After All

Japanese Console manufacturer Nintendo has officially confirmed today that it will be reducing the price of its flagship product, the Wii console back to its original suggested retail price of £179.99.

The BBC reports that the firm will indeed lower the trade price which means that it will be the retailers themselves that will define the final selling price to the consumers. 

The price cuts will be rolled out on the 27th of September in the US, with Japan and Europe following on the first two days of October; prices in the US and Japan will be cost by 20 percent.

Worldwide sales of the Wii fell from 5.17 million between April and June 2008 to 2.23 million during the same period in 2009 , a 57 percent drop in sales; the drop in sales is likely to exacerbated by the recent drop in prices from Microsoft and Sony.

Back in March 2009, Nintendo increased the price of its console citing the severe and continuing depreciation of the Pound compared to the Japanese Yen.

In addition, it seems that the basic SKU will be bundled with a couple of games and the Motion Plus peripheral and likely to cost around £190.

Nintendo can easily afford to drop the price of its console since it is still making a profit with each console being sold. In comparison, both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 are money losers with Sony and Microsoft recouping their costs through peripheral and games sales.

Furthermore, over the three years since the Wii was launched, Nintendo should have managed to slash the cost of manufacturing its console box thanks to more mature manufacturing processes.