Last Monday, right after coming from playing Dead Space at EA India’s office, Reggie and I planned to check out the Nintendo Showroom floor at the MGF Mega City Mall here in Gurgaon - both locations are practically within walking distance. However, what started out as a curious stroll turned into a delightful display of Nintendo memorabilia, but quickly ended up becoming a vulgar awakening of awkwardness and deceit.

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Nintendo’s recent interest in coming to India is certainly an odd creature. Their competitors Microsoft and Sony already have themselves grounded much before anyone even uttered to think what it would be like if the big N decided to join the fray. And even then, when you consider the console market in India isn’t all that big to begin with, plus the reports of global Wii shortages this coming holiday season, and least we forget the rampant piracy scene that our country is known for – Nintendo’s decision to come to India, to reiterate, seems awfully strange. Almost strange enough to have us think, “Why even bother?”

Despite whatever concoctions may arise (whether it’s yours or mine), there’s one thing Nintendo’s official distributor Samurai-India is sure of: Nintendo is happy to be in India. Granted, we may have missed out on a few generations of monumental games hither and thither (barring the Virtual Boy, natch), but what’s important is now. Besides, hello? Virtual Console? Samurai’s head-honcho Mahesh Toshniwal also reflects upon this by bringing up the pricing choice made for the Wii and DS:

In view of [the] very high taxes in India -34% import duty/ 2% CST/ 12.5 % VAT - the price is justified. In fact, it is very difficult to maintain this price as it was calculated and fixed at a dollar-rupee exchange of RS 42.00. Today the exchange stands at 45.5.

Be sure to check out Sam’s full interview with Mahesh on the availability of first-party software and accessories.

For all those who have been lamenting about the non-availability of Nintendo Wii in India, well, here is some good news. After a couple of false starts and rumors, we can confirm that the Wii is about to be officially launched in India! Making the news even more sweeter is the fact that even the DS will be launched in tandem with the Wii!!

Samurai-India, in partnership with HCL, will be officially launching the Wii and DS on 30th September 2008. In fact, they have already unofficially started supplying the consoles to all the major electronic chains and it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing them on the store shelves. The Nintendo Wii will be priced at INR 19,990 while the Nintendo DS will be available for INR 7,990.

Samurai-India’s website is still under construction but the presence of Nintendo in the URL is more then enough to tell us that we are on the right trail. Keep watching this space as more and more information trickles in.

Editors Note: Our friends over at GamingIndians have some more interesting insight on the impending release of the two consoles. Do have a look.

Update: Samurai-India’s website is now live.