Jun 22, 2011 22:51 GMT  ·  By

An Australian retail chain, EB Games, has posted a price of 598 Australian dollars for the recently announced Wii U home console from Nintendo, suggesting the price that interested gamers all over the world might have to pay when the new platform is released to the public.

The price translates to about 633 United States dollars but often hardware in Australia is priced higher than in other territories even when taking into account shifting currency conversion rates.

Nintendo has not offered an official price point for the Wii U and the company has also refused to offer any hint about how much avid fans should save for launch day.

When the Wii was first out it cost 400 Australian dollars and at the moment the current Nintendo hardware can be purchased for around 170 dollars.

The Nintendo 3DS costs about 350 at the moment.

The Wii U has been officially shown off at the E3 2011 press conference from Nintendo, with the company focusing on the new controller, which incorporates a touch screen and also offers the normal motion tracking capabilities and analog controls.

Since then Nintendo has also made it clear that its new video game console will deliver the same graphics power as current platforms from Sony and Microsoft and that tweaks are still being made to the included hardware.

Another retail chain posted a product page for the Wii U which suggested that it would be launched during June of 2012.

Nintendo has not commented on the price point or on the possible launch date.

Nintendo needs to be careful about the pricing of the Wii U because it will need to make it competitive with the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 but also recuperate its production costs.

The company has said that it aims to expand the audience for its games with the Wii U and that graphics parity with the current generation is important.