Where Can You Pre-Order a Wii U?

Now that the cat is officially out of the bag about Nintendo’s Wii U console—costing $300 or $350 on the day of release on November 18—where can you actually secure yourself a system? As of this writing, there’s only one game in town, and that’s GameStop.

In fact, GameStop’s homepage was updated within minutes of this morning’s press conference’s conclusion, advertising the two SKUs. Not only that, but they’ve launched a trade-in promotion to defray the cost of the new console—including a $50 rebate for your old Wii system (and an extra $10 back for PowerUp Rewards members, making the total rebate $60), which is actually a pretty decent deal at the end of the day.

Sure, the original Wii cost about $250 at launch…but that was years ago, and it’s not like you’ve used the Wii too recently. Not only that, but the Wii U is expected to offer near-total backwards compatibility with the system, even utilizing the same Wii remote controllers. All in all, it sure does make a lot of sense to ditch the old for the U (see what I did there?). The trade-in promotion also offers solid money for any other systems, but let’s face it—we’re probably all going to hold on to our other consoles until Microsoft and Sony announce their next-gen systems next year…and trade them in then.

But where are the pre-order options at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or Walmart? So far, none of those retailers websites have updated their listings with the console’s release date or price. In fact, only Best Buy’s website even acknowledges the existence of the forthcoming console—typing “Wii U” into the search box of the other retailers only brings up the games, few of which have anything resembling the correct price, and none with the right release date.

It seems pretty likely that GameStop made a deal with Nintendo to get an exclusive jump on offering pre-orders, though it’s not clear how long that’ll last. Not only that, but as of now, the trade-in option for the original Wii at Amazon offers only $32.35. None of the other sites seem to even offer trade-in deals.

Either that means that they don’t have their deals lined up yet—or getting a whopping $60 for your dusty old system is going to be the very best you can do. Because when GameStop’s trade-in promotion ends on September 23, chances are you won’t be able to give that thing away.

Yeah. GameStop’s going to clean up. If anyone sees pre-order opportunities in North America pop up, let us know in the comments!