Game & Wario ends Nintendo Wii U drought with reduced price

Game & Wario will cost $40 when it launches on June 23 in North America. The low retail price was first leaked via several retailers, and then confirmed to Joystiq by Nintendo.

The GamePad-centric collection of minigames will be the first Nintendo-developed title to launch for Wii U since December. Expect to see more unusual price points from Nintendo in the future.

President Satoru Iwata said, in a new financial Q&A, the company is investigating more business models--including free-to-play and subscriptions--inspired by projects like Wii Street U.

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In the same Q&A, Iwata said Nintendo originally planned to release a "few" first-party titles for Wii U in the first half of 2013--not just Game & Wario. The empty calendar has meant equally slow sales for the console, which has sold 3.45 million units since launch.

But the delay of games like Pikmin 3, which will launch on August 4 in North America, were necessary to allow all-hands-on-deck for the system's launch.

"The reason for the delayed release of our first-party titles was the fact that completing the games released at the same time as the launch of Wii U required more development resources than expected, so some staff members from development teams working on other titles had to help complete them. In short, the development teams of Pikmin 3 and other future games were understaffed during that period."

To make sure the games were up to snuff despite development pinches, Nintendo had to push them back, Iwata said.

Check out our list of the The 15 rarest and most valuable Nintendo Wii games of all time.