Wow. And I thought we were looking at a time of smaller prices. Rather than go for, as I – and Bobby Kotick – had thought, a bunch of price cuts in a bid to attract more sales of consoles and games, Nintendo are going the other way and raising the price in the UK.

It’s a twisted logic but dammit, it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference to the sales. Read up on why over the jump.

Nintendo have cited “the depreciation of the pound” as the reason behind their decision to raise the trade price of the Wii (and possibly software) in the UK. This means that it’s gonna cost more for retailers to buy the console in. Makes sense, in a way, for those of us who read the news.

***BORING SECTION BEGINS***

For those not aware (that’s probably a lot of us) the Bank of England recently opted to carry out a procedure called quantitative easing; this essentially means printing a helluva lot of new money for banks to trade with so the markets don’t crash and anarchy begins and everyone dies or something.

Because there’s more money out there than normal, the money loses value compared to other currencies. These days a pound is valued at about a dollar and 38 cents; it used to be worth as much as 2 bucks. This means that, to compensate for the loss Nintendo would make when selling to British retailers, they’ll need to raise the price a little. It’s up to retailers if they want to pass on the extra cost or not.

***BORING SECTION ENDS***

The thing is, I’m not sure if this is a reasonable excuse for a company like Nintendo. Their profit forecasts for the 2008 fiscal year (which ends at the end of this month) sit at over 2 billion dollars. That, to anybody, is a lot of money.

I don’t see Sony or Microsoft putting up the trade prices of their consoles or software. Sony would especially have been the likely suspects, because of how much the PlayStation 3 costs to produce. But Nintendo? The Wii surely must be cheap-as-chips to produce, hence the low price-point.

The thing is, raised price or not, people will still buy the Wii because it’s the Wii. £20, or however much the raise will be, will not matter to them. I’m willing to bet Nintendo are trying to take advantage of the current trend of spending on staying in.

So then, Nintendo: greedy, or just economically hypersensitive? You be the judge!

Wii price to rise… / Nintendo warns software… – GamesIndustry.biz