Is It Worth It To Buy A Wii U?

Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
| The video game industry has gone from a mole hill to a mountain in no time flat, Chris DiMarco is your Sherpa as you endeavor to scale Mount “Everquest”

Is It Worth It To Buy A Wii U?

With the opening frenzy of Wii U sales now officially out of everyone's collective system, there are likely plenty of fence-sitters out there engaging in a little pre-shopping navel gazing, wondering if it's worth it to go out and buy one of Nintendo's newest hardware efforts. But the smart ones stopped in here first to find out for themselves. So we ask the question: is it worth it to buy a Nintendo Wii U? The answer, meanwhile, is a somewhat helpful "probably".

Primarily, it's a question of value. Sure, there are those out there who want to wait for the initial buying frenzy to die down. Maybe they'll wait for after Christmas sales, or to use gift cards obtained over the holidays to provide an extra discount. Maybe they want to wait for more titles to land on the device first. Some want to see the hardware bugs worked out of the system. Good ideas all, but the key point here is that it's a question of value.

Some question the overall value of buying a Wii U, thanks to the likely imminent launch of the next Xbox and PlayStation systems. But those launches are as yet unknown in their date, with many projecting that the systems in question won't make appearances until the 2013 E3 event in June. From there, the systems likely wouldn't even see shelves before November, just in time to take advantage of Black Friday sales and the Christmas shopping season. That's pretty much an entire year at the least before a new system rears its head--a year's worth of games, patches, and assorted updates to give the Wii U that extra note of functionality.

The immediate downside, however, is one of overall releases. A glance at a release calendar found at Gamefaqs shows just nine titles in the pipeline for the Wii U between right now and the end of March. At least two of them--007 Legends and Marvel Avengers: Battle For Earth--are currently available for other systems. That doesn't preclude the likelihood of more to emerge between now and then, naturally, but it does make the picture a little darker than it was.

Still though, there are quite a few games already in play for the Wii U depending on where you are, and more likely to follow. By the time it even becomes possible to buy an Xbox 720, you'll have had a year with the Wii U. That's a pretty strong recommendation right there.

If nothing else, even after a year, there will probably be plenty of trade-in credit available on that Wii U to get a healthy discount on that new Xbox or PlayStation version. So is it worth it to buy a Wii U? If you can look at the current lineup, and the near-term lineup likely to arrive, and say "I want to play that" more than, oh, five times or so, it's probably a pretty good idea indeed.
Enhanced by Zemanta


Featured Events