Nintendo Wii U Release Date and Price Announced

September 13, 2012 by Paul Curtin

Today at their press conference, Nintendo spilled a slew of new details on their upcoming next-gen system and finally gave a release date. Nintendo announced that the Wii U will officially be released on November 18, 2012 with two options: a Basic ($299) set and a Deluxe ($349) set. The $299 Basic set will come with a white Wii U that has 8GB of internal storage, a GamePad, stylus, sensor bar, AC adapters, and an HDMI cable. The $349 Deluxe package will come with a black Wii U that has 32GB of internal storage, a GamePad, stylus, sensor bar, AC adapters, HDMI cable, Nintendo Land game, GamePad stand, GamePad cradle, Wii U stand, and a subscription to Nintendo Network Premium which offers 10% discounts on downloadable software.

Getting into the specs that everyone has been dying to know, the Wii U will have 2GB of memory, 1GB for games and 1GB for system memory. Its discs will have a 25GB capacity, and won’t be Blu-ray. It will be backwards compatible with the Wii and all of the Wii’s accessories right out of the box. Additional GamePad tablet controllers can be purchased for around $165.

The console’s 2GBs of memory is going to have a lot of people split over just how “next-gen” it really is. At the moment, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 only have 512 MB of RAM and have to split said ram between their CPU and GPU. Keep in mind that both the 360 and PS3 are about 6 and 7 year old systems, so while the ram might be 4x as much, it’s not a massive leap, especially when compared to current high-end gaming PCs that are running 8-12GB of RAM. Comparing to PCs might be a little unfair though when considering how much more PCs have to process, and 1GB dedicated just to gaming is impressive right now, but in 1-2 years it will already start to show its age, likely putting the Wii U in the same position as the Wii when the next PlayStation and Xbox launch.

Still no word on exactly what GPU will be used in the system, but Nintendo has listed AMD Radeon™-based High Definition GPU on their site that most people have been speculating will be the E6760 which is AMD’s first embedded GPGPU that launched last year.

Nintendo also revealed a video application for the Wii U called TVii that connects the console to streaming video services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.com. The Wii U will be cable of full high-definition video output that can do up to 1080P and the ability to use the GamePad tablet as an auxiliary display and remote control.

Nintendo Land and New Super Mario Bros. U are both set to launch with the Wii U on November 18th when it releases. Nintendo also plans on releasing over 50 games during the Wii U launch window, which will be from this November until March 2013. Check out a list of all 50+ games below: