Wii is the most expensive console in Greater Asia excluding Japan?

[clouette]

1) Do you know there are more PSP than DS owners in Singapore?

2) Do you know that Wii is the most expensive console in Singapore (and perhaps most Asia countries)?

3) I bet you know Nintendo has no local presence and no local releases in most Asia countries.

Base on the above 3 points I'd like to announce this big irony. (hopefully Nintendo do something)

Just a look on the subway(MRT) in my little country, you'll see PSP users far outstrip DS users. It could be because ladies are still not picking up gaming in my region. And guys here still prefer graphics over innovation gameplay, e.g. talking into the DS microphone.

In Singapore,

- Wii costs S$659

- PS3 costs S$559

- XBOX360 Arcade costs S$429 (Pro costs $620, Elite costs $799)

Can you believe this biggest irony? Because I can't. That's why I bought my Wii from the US.

The underlying reason: Nintendo is not here, it chose to release its console and games via 3rd party distributors. On the other hand, Sony and Microsoft has a very big presence in Singapore, and they released consoles cheaper than US here. Yesterday I was walking past this popular gaming shop Funzcentre and was puzzled why there were so many boxes there. It turned out that there are 100 new 40GB PS3 consoles inside, and the boss told me it's just 1/3 of his pre-orders. The price: S$559. My jaws dropped, PS3 is cheaper in Singapore than US, how can it be? And it comes in white!! And this is just from 1 shop! From this week onwards, Wii became officially the most expensive console in Singapore.

In fact, this was not the case when it was first released. XBOX360 costed more than S$600, while PS3 was released at S$799 and the Wii was only S$499. So it was originally the cheapest. But after some price cuts from MS and Sony, things became upsided down. When Wii came to Singapore early this year at S$499, it was already S$100+ more expensive than the US price. The local distributor, Maxsoft, is charging a premium to us. Then, after a while, perhaps realizing that their lousy Wii games are not selling, they forcefully bundled 2 games with the Wii at $647 and force it down to the retailers. Mind you the games are not Mario Party 8, Rayman, Metriod stuffs. They are Shrek 3, Spiderman 3, Sonic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pokemon, games that nobody buys. The price S$659 came because Singapore raise the GST tax from 5% to 7% in July 1st. Another thing, their warranty for the DS and Wii is only 3 months. 3 months!!!

Thus many parallel importers are able to make big bucks in Singapore because of that stupid official price. They import US sets because Singapore has the same region code as US for Wii. That's the only good thing.

Just 2 weeks ago, one electronic store advertised that it will sell Wii at S$499, and all the 40 units got snapped within a few hours. Bottomline, if you want XBox460 or PS3 in Singapore, buy here. If you want Wii, get it from the US.