Sales of Nintendo Wii U are nothing but disaster and even the platform holder itself slashed fiscal years sales target of the latest video game systems from 5.5 million units to 4 million units. Officially Nintendo does not want to cut the price of Wii U since it already sells it at a loss. As it appears, retailers in the U.K. have either decided to cut the price of the product themselves, or the company is quietly investigating the effect of a price-slash.

This week several key U.K. retailers, including Asda and Amazon.co.uk reduced the price of both versions of Wii U by £50, reports CVG web-site. ShopTo, an online games retailer, also recently slashed the price of the Wii U basic pack by £60. As a result, Wii U basic is now sold for £190 ($286, €219) - £199 ($300, €229), whereas the Wii U deluxe pack is available for £249 ($375, €287), which brings prices in the U.K. to the levels in the rest of the European Union and the U.S.

Since the official price of Nintendo Wii U game consoles for the United Kingdom has not changed, the price slash either means that retailers are selling the systems at a loss, which is something hard to believe in, or Nintendo is unofficially testing how a price-slash affects adoption rate of the console.

According to Nintendo itself, it sold around 180 thousand Wii U systems in Europe during the launch week, but sales quickly dropped to around 90 thousand level on the second week of availability. Sales of Wii U around Europe (which includes all PAL countries, such as Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and so on) dropped to below 50 thousand on the final week of the year, trailing all non-portable game systems.

In case Nintendo is indeed testing demand flexibility with a, perhaps, temporary price reduction in the U.K., the company may indeed be ready for a price-cut on Wii U. However, the company wants to find out whether the price-slash really significantly improves sales and adoption of the new console.

Nintendo did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Nintendo, Wii U, Business, Wii