The Wii U is in an odd spot. It never found the audience Nintendo was hoping for, and after two or three years it was already being phased out in favor of the Switch. Despite that, it’s yet to receive a significant price drop, even as the more-successful PlayStation 4 and Xbox One take detours into discount city.
When the Wii U launched in 2012, it came in two flavors: Basic (8GB), which cost $300 and was not good, and Premium (32GB), which came at a slightly steeper asking price of $350. Basic has pretty much disappeared at this point, and Premium now costs $300, but otherwise the official price hasn’t budged.
For comparison’s sake, the Xbox One has dropped from $500 all the way to $250, while the PS4 has gone from $400 to $300, with bundles running as low as $250. For some reason, though, the Wii U—the least popular of them all—is content to stay at an imposing $300 price point. And that’ll never change, given that Nintendo stopped producing new Wii Us in early November. At least maybe it’ll be a collector’s item soon?