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Posted by: Matt Liebl

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No one knows how much the Wii U will cost when it launches later this year, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has reassured gamers that he wants the price to remain "reasonable in comparison to the value to be offered".

What does that mean in terms of dollars? We don't really know for sure, but Iwata did sharee how Nintendo has been spending their hardware development budget on the Wii U compared to competing platform developers like Sony and Microsoft, who are each assumed to be working on their own next-gen consoles.

"Of course, because we have designed a new hardware system, we are using new technology and we are using new GPUs. But as we have to devote significant costs to the Wii U GamePad, if we were to apply the same level of enhancement that other console manufacturers shoot for to the processing power component, the Wii U would become extremely high in price, and it would not be affordable," Iwata explained to CVG.

"In other words, we think that the way that the various console manufacturers are allocating their budgets to the hardware is different from the way that we allocate our budget to the hardware. Ultimately, we're looking to maintain a price point for the Wii U that is reasonable in comparison to the value to be offered."

That leaves one question to be answered: how much is the Wii U's value, in terms of gameplay, worth to you?

[CVG]

Tags: Wii U, Nintendo