Wii Price Increase?!?!?!!?

Dustin Quillen, of 1up.com, fills us in on how the Wii got more expensive in the U.K.

But it's the lead that's most striking to me:

As hard as it may be to believe, it's been over two years since the world first got its collective hands on Nintendo's sales-chart-dominating Wii, and we've yet to so much as catch wind of the console's first price drop.

He's right. Every 12-18 months, first-party developers are expected to drop the price of their console, but Nintendo's done no such thing and no one is asking. While some gamers sneered at the Wii's last generation graphics, Miyamoto and Co. revamped the Gamecube with online functionality, innovative controls, and mass appeal. Then they called it the Wii and laughed all the way to the post-recession bank. Admittedly, I'm not a Wii player (PS3 just has the titles I want), but Nintendo is responsible for finishing what Sony started with the Playstation in the late 90's: making video games a permanent fixture in post-industrial cultures.