The pricing of Wii U online purchases

[Cobra_]

There will be retail fees, actually. In order not to infuriate retailers (Nintendo needs them to sell the console) Nintendo came up with a way to give them a share - the downloadable games will be paid for in stores, you just get a download code or something.

And even if there is another way and if the process is cheaper (which it might be and it also might not be, since the whole game download service costs something as well) the experience from other services (Steam...) tells us that games are almost never cheaper in downloadable form, unless you wait for some sort of sale.