The Wii U’s price and release date were announced yesterday. It’s launching on November 18 and will be available in two flavors – one for $299 and the other for $349. It’s now up for pre-order across the land with GameStop running some deals for those who trade in a Wii for the Wii U. One retailer, perhaps the biggest of all, is not stocking the Wii U for unknown reasons.
According to Joystiq, Amazon just sent out this notice to customers who wanted to be updated on the Wii U:
Dear Amazon.com Customer, Thank for you signing up to be notified when the Wii U is available. Unfortunately the Wii U console is not available at Amazon.com at this time but please check back in the future, as availability may change. We do have the latest Wii U games and accessories available now so check them out. Thank you for shopping with Amazon Video Games.
This basically translate to Amazon saying that they won’t be taking pre-orders on the Wii U, nor will they be selling it. It’s actually kind of expected since Amazon doesn’t sell the Wii or the 3DS. Both consoles are sold by another store that sells through the Amazon marketplace.
This has been going on for a while now and nobody knows why. It’s unclear if Amazon or Nintendo have a beef with the other or if they both just mutually hate each other. It’s just mind boggling that a major retailer like Amazon wouldn’t want to be in on the launch of a new console.
We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment. We’ll update if we hear back.