UK Will be Getting the Wii Mini, But Does Anyone Really Care?

The Wii Mini was launched in Canada last year, a cut down edition of their multi million selling original Wii, sort of a last hurrah to their arm waggling crazy and a way of selling even more hardware units in light of their recent console the Wii U. While Nintendo said that it didn’t know of any future for the new edition outside of the limited release in Canada, it seems they are bringing it to the UK.

While there is no official word on price at the moment it has been confirmed that it will arrive in retail outlets on the 22nd of March this year and I can’t help but wonder, do we really need it, or even if there is a market for the device here at this time?

To reduce the overall size and the cost of the device, Nintendo have stripped some of the features and with no online functionality and no GameCube support I feel they’ve taken two of the best features of the Wii away from the device. It is however ideal for those wanting a second console, a cheaper unit for their children, a replacement or even just for those that missed out and want to visit the console for some of the titles they may have missed out on. There are afterall a lot of great games for the Wii if you can track them down such as the various Zelda and Mario games.

The only issue I see is that you can pick up a 2nd hand Wii for next to nothing these days and still get all the functionality for less than the Wii Mini, so does anyone really need this console, especially given were in a market where PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are cheaper than ever?

If the hardware does well here in the UK its likely that Nintendo will continue to release it in other markets, but it seems only time will tell if there is still some life in the platoform yet.