Over the weekend a broken link for the Wii Mini was discovered on Nintendo’s UK site, indicating that we might soon hear about a non-Canada launch for the tiny console. Nintendo officially confirmed that to be the case today, with the announcement that the Wii Mini will arrive in the United Kingdom on March 22nd.
As The Big N often does with their hardware releases in the UK, no RRP was announced for the Wii Mini. This means that any interested buyers for the red and black console will have to wait for retailers to price the system. For reference, the system sells for $99 (about £65) in Canada.
So what can UK gamers who are extremely late to the Wii party get for (£65)? Not that much. The Wii Mini will successfully boot up and run over 1200 disc-based Wii software titles. It also comes with a red Wii Remote Plus and matching Nunchuk controller, and is compatible with “most existing Wii accessories”. Additionally, it is very tiny as its name suggests.
And… that is about it.
The biggest downside to the Wii Mini console is that there is no Internet connectivity options, which means no; WiiWare, Virtual Console games, Wii Channels, Hulu Plus, Netflix, multiplayer games, or game patches (yes a few Wii games did have patches). Additionally, there are no GameCube controller ports — obviously this means that it won’t play GameCube software, but it also means that you can’t use the WaveBird for Mario Kart Wii or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Finally, the Wii Mini doesn’t even have an SD card slot, so all of your game saves will forever be locked on the system.
Basically, if you live in the UK and are in the market for an extremely stripped down Wii that is only slightly cheaper than the full-sized Wii, it looks like you are in luck.
Nintendo has not mentioned if the Wii Mini will be released in the U.S., but I would not be surprised if it gets announced in a few days.
