Tough talk from GameDaily editor James Brightman yesterday.

Here at GamePolitics we like tough talk, especially when it's on the money. Even more so when it's about the money.

Brightman looks at GameStop/EB's online bundle pricing for the Wii, and finds that it registers high on the gouge-o-meter: a $249 console plus $450 of bundled games and accessories adding up to $699, nearly triple the price of the Wii itself.

This is nothing new, of course. We complained about the same predatory retail practices during the Xbox 360 launch last year. Can this be legal? Apparently so. GDB spoke with Bob Freitas, an attorney who specializes in tech and anti-trust issues. Freitas said:

The most common way that something like this would be looked at would be a problem with so called tying arrangements, where someone will condition the purchase of one product on the purchase of another...

But, there have been a lot of changes in the law.. that have resulted in the anti-trust law prohibitions against tying arrangements just not being as strong as they used to be...

It's pretty tough to mount an anti-trust based attack on most forms of product bundling.

Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) president Hal Halpin, who knows a thing or two about retailing based on his former career as head of a game retailers trade association, explained how can consumers fight back:

What our (ECA) members and what consumers should do, in my opinion, is vote with their wallets... they should go to retailers and support the retailers that don't (bundle).

From the ECA's perspective, this is actually the first time that it was raised as a potentially questionable legal matter... It's certainly worthwhile looking at because if it's of concern to our members it's of concern to us. And oftentimes it just plain out sucks...

The industry's inevitable move to digital distribution may change or even eliminate the bundling equation by the time we reach the next round of consoles.

Full disclosure dept: The ECA recently acquired GamePolitics.