An incredibly gaudy piece of game marketing history is now available to buy on eBay. I speak, of course, of an electroplated golden Wii that was apparently made with Queen Elizabeth of England in mind. If you wish to own this 24-karat monstrosity, you can buy it for the low price of $300,000.
To give some background, the Wii was apparently created by THQ as part of a marketing stunt to promote Big Family Games, a piece of Wii shovelware published by the company in 2009. They intended to send it to the royal lady, who rumor has it did actually play a Wii game with her grandson Prince William in 2008 (Wii Bowling, apparently).
The Wii doesn’t appear to have ever actually been the property of Her Majesty the Queen, for all that’s what the manufacturers claimed. A 2019 investigation by the channel People Make Games discovered the console was indeed sent to Buckingham Palace, where the staff declined to sign for it as part of a blanket no-gifts policy. The console was sent back to a THQ office, where it apparently remained until the company went bankrupt in 2012, at which point it disappeared, possibly having been sold off with the rest of THQ’s assets.
According to the investigation, it was purchased in 2017 by Donny Fillerup, one of the founders of ConsoleVariations.com. He’s now the one selling it on eBay, according to a blog post on the site. (Fillerup was jokingly asked in the post if he’d consider selling it “back” to the Queen, which is odd considering the very documentary where he revealed his ownership of the Wii confirmed the Queen never owned it in the first place.) He’s apparently selling it to buy a house and says there’s a chance he’s lowballing the price, but he hopes the console goes to a good home.
Source: eBay
