Some retailers charging more for multiplatform titles on Wii U in the UK
A number of UK retailers are charging more for multiplatform titles on Wii U – mainly when it comes to product from Activision, THQ, Ubisoft.
GAME, Play.com, and Amazon are among the list of sites that are asking for at least £10 more for titles such as Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and 007 Legends. In one specific case, GAME is asking for an extra £18 over the Xbox 360 version with purchases of Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.
Zavvi is one of the few retailers keeping pricing similar between consoles. Most of the Wii U’s games that haven’t been out on other platforms for awhile are seeing prices similar to the Xbox 360 versions.
All of this may seem a bit alarming, but there’s no need to worry. IHS Screen Digest games analysis head Piers Harding-Rolls, told CVG, “you can understand why this is happening, and historically you do see this practice with games for new consoles”.
“The higher Wii U games prices are a function of several factors. One is the wholesale price of the games, which you would expect to be relatively higher than the platforms that have been on the market for quite some time. These prices are also driven by the fact that publishers want to protect the long-term positioning of their games, so with new consoles it can be higher. Another major factor is the retailers’ margin. The question is, where do they feel they can position the pricing of the Wii U games? It’s a new platform on the market, so retailers are looking at how much a premium they can price their games at. There are other cost factors. It may be more costly to produce these games, there may be bigger licensing costs to pay to Nintendo at this stage in the cycle.”
