The Wii U Basic Set may be nearing its end (the white Wii U that has only 8GB of memory). Nintendo has revealed this news via their Japanese website, where it says they are eliminating the console’s basic edition in Japan. Nintendo has been favoring bundles with the Wii U Deluxe Edition such as the Mario Kart 8 bundle or the Super Mario 3D World bundle (shown below). As a result, the basic edition of the console has become harder to find. Whether other regions will follow suite and also discontinue the basic edition Wii U console remains to be seen. To make up for this, Nintendo is adding a new 32GB bundle for 30,000 Yen (currently, that’s a little less than $250 US Dollars and a bit less than £160 British Pounds).
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The Basic Edition Wii U was a nice option for less hardcore gamers who don’t plan on downloading too much stuff from the Wii U eShop, and still is. However, we now have big DLC packs for games such as Hyrule Warriors and Mario Kart 8, as well as a wealth of games that can be downloaded in full from the Wii U eShop. So the amount of downloadable content has grown quite a bit, and as that continues it’s definitely better to have the deluxe Wii U with its 32GB of memory. Gamers who own the basic Wii U console will be much more likely to run out of memory and have to uninstall something they don’t play much anymore to make room for something new they want to download. That’s not a huge issue, but it can be annoying if you encounter that problem.
I personally own a shiny black deluxe Wii U because I wanted the extra memory since I’m a harder core gamer who plays a lot. I think the black Wii U also just looks sleeker and cooler then the Wii U Basic Edition console, too. I’m not sure they should really get rid of the Wii U Basic Edition completely, but it seems that is what is happening in Japan. The system has been out for a long while now, so you would think there probably wouldn’t be as much demand for the basic edition at this point as compared to the console’s launch window, anyway. The fate of the Wii U Basic Edition in regions outside of Japan remains to be seen, but it’s very possible it will find itself getting discontinued in those regions as well.
