GamesIndustry

Nintendo of America CEO is very happy with the reaction to Wii U so far, confirms no standalone GamePads sold at launch.

Wii U, it's finally been revealed, will launch on November 18 with a starting price of $299. It's going to be a hugely important launch for Nintendo in a very crowded and competitive entertainment landscape, but Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime is very encouraged by the early response to the new console.

Speaking at the New York City Wii U event, Fils-Aime told GamesIndustry International that Nintendo's already seeing lots of excitement from retail partners. "We've announced the price and we have a number of retailers taking pre-orders and the feedback that I'm getting from retailers is extremely strong in terms of pre-sales and consumer excitement at the store," he said.

Fils-Aime stressed to us that with every hardware launch, Nintendo looks to ensure a good value proposition for the consumer, and he's confident most of Nintendo's customers will feel that Wii U does indeed offer a good value for the money.

"In the end... I care about the consumer who's putting money down on a pre-order and whether or not we're presenting a great value to them. Based on some of the reports I'm getting, the answer is yes," he said.

Elsewhere in the interview, we asked about whether we'll be able to buy standalone GamePads at launch and when we'll see games that support two GamePads. It'll be some time it seems, and Reggie confirmed to us that GamePads won't be sold individually initially.

We'll be posting the full interview tomorrow, in which Reggie discusses how Nintendo arrived at the price points they did, why Nintendo Land is the pack-in game (in the $349 SKU), competing with tablets and free-to-play, the ever-stretching "launch window" and more.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-09-14-wii-u-retailer-feedback-and-pre-sales-already-extremely-strong-says-reggie

I'll preorder mine on Saturday!

I pounced immediately, for fear of shortages, so i end up reserving it at this gamestop about 30 miles away (oddly a gamestop in the same town as the gamecrazy where i got the Wii).

I'm going to pre-order soon too, just waiting to see if anyone has some kind of special pre-order bonus.

Probably will pre-order from Best Buy, in store x2. I'm going to pre-order 2. I didn't think the first Wii would sell out then got caught scrambling to like 8 different stores to find one.

If Miiverse and that Nintendo TVii are fairly well featured services, I think Wii U is going to take off pretty well.

Going to pre-order mine at Gamestop tomorrow.

Either the Wii U will be a success and have a great library of games or it will be Nintendo's home console swansong.

Either way i will be picking this console up day 1

I preordered 3.

I refuse to buy until the price becomes $50 less.

I will be 1500 miles away from the Gamestop I frequent by the time the system releases, but they're going to send it to me anyways because they're awesome. B)

You better hope that it doesn't do that well then, lol. If it has an explosive launch I don't see a price cut for a long time, just a reshuffling of bundles maybe.