There's a reason it costs more. There's less people in Australia, so there's more costs for shipping involved as they can't mass ship like they do in the US. Not sure how Australia handles customs and fees, but that could also add to the price.

Good choice man, I´ll be jumping on the Wii60 wagon myself soon, only I started out with a Wii :) and no I realy don´t think Nintendo is in any position where they feel they need a price cut, late next year is the earliest option IMO, maybe we´ll see some new colors in early 08. It´s a good thing in some respect, if Nintendo ceeps making good money on the Wii they are sure to reinvest some of it into new projects to ensure a long Wii success.

Yeah I feel your pain about price ripoffs, I know there are worse places than germany but the euro beeing pretty strong right now a 250$ Wii should be around 185 euros here, and a 360 premium should be around 250 euros, which is what we pay for a Wii. Oh well, such is life, makes me wish I lived in japan though :)

well we pay roughly 350 US $ for our wii's in the UK...and about US $68 for our software(1st party wii games are only £34.99 nowadays)

Rab used "mate," I smell a fellow Aussie!!!!:)
@ Rendo. Yeah i totally understand the economics of it as far as console prices are concerned. But even with that taken into account, the RRP of top tier games in Australia for the 360 is AU$109 or even more. Our dollar buys 80US cents. There is no way in hell that that entire difference is made up of taxes, as all the actual physical games are manufactured at dvd factories here as far as i know. Even if they are not, the difference is still to significant to be tolerable and it hurts.

Still, because i need to play those Nintendo franchises ill pay the excess, but if there was a price cut for consoles or games not to far off id happily wait.

Hate to say it starcraft, but if you're not American you're screwed. I'm Canadian and our dollar gives us about 96 cents US, and we STILL pay $289.99 for a Wii and $549.99 for the 60gig PS3. At least M$ was kind enough to give us a $100 price drop, but it's just the way it works. The US has a much larger economy, not necessarily stronger, and they can make demands that us smaller, but still economically powerful nations can't, and have other nations agree to them. :(

It's like when I shop for computer parts. Our dollars are basically the same, yet all across the board there's 10-30% price differences. :/ Maybe importing is cheaper for, have you looked into that? Get a NTSC (Assuming Australia is PAL) Wii, and see how much it'd cost a buddy of yours overseas to ship the units to you, barring customs and tariffs.

Ok i know im going to look like a fool, but wtf is an NTSC wii and how do i get one?

ntsc is just americas region. like pal is australian/europe... so to get one, import from america ;)

To be fair your taxes on electronic goods (which are paid in wholesale, so you don't even see them) are much higher. US prices add taxes after the retail price, and they are much, much lower.

Ah, the advantages of having no medical coverage, free university system, true social welfare programs, etc.

There's different encoding systems for televisions. North America is basically NTSC. PAL is what most European countries use. Basically the tv's have different refresher rates and only specific versions, IE PAL tv with PAL console with PAL game will work. It's called region coding.

Anyways, what you'd do is get someone to import, IE send, you a NTSC one. You'd need something to be able to make your TV watch in NTSC, but most TV's can do both and then you'd have to buy the specific NTSC games, via importing.

A lot of people do it with titles that are only released in Japan, they get a Japanese Wii, or any console, not just Wii for that matter, imported and the game imported so they can play the games.

This also applies to movies on DVD. I bought a region free dvd player, paid a bit more than a normal one, just so I can watch DVD's that are made in Europe that never come to North America.

 Not a Metroid fan?  Also, once you get your Wii, start grabbing some Gamecube games, the gen you missed had some awesome cube games.  You could play through all three Primes on the Wii...  which would take you about 60 hours to do.  Awesome games, this last one is the best in the series though.  The price of used cube games should make up for any extra price you pay for the Wii compared to the U.S.