Wii: "If you see one, buy it." I call BS

[kaedesdisciple]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/12/n...-the-holidays/

Now Nintendo is telling us that the Wii shortages will only continue through to the '07 holiday season. A senior marketing VP is telling us "If you see one, buy it"? This is total garbage. Can they honestly say that they can't produce these things fast enough by NOW? You can rebut me all you want, but I believe that Nintendo is doing this on purpose. I'm not buying one for a long time now simply because of their horribly smug attitude.

[Gamereviewgod]

Agreed. Working at a retailer that carries the thing, it's ridiculous that this is still going on. The constant calls are beyond annoying with people asking if we have them.

With the cheaper, more familiar weaker hardware, there's no reason for another damn season of shortages.

[heybtbm]

While it can be dismissed as anecdotal evidence, I've never seen a Wii on a store shelf. Even when I bought mine back in February, I had to ask the greeter at Best Buy for a special ticket which I presented to the cashier. They brought one out to me and that was that. I only knew they had Wii's on that day because a friend's friend who worked there told him (who informed me). If I would've gone to the store unaware...I never would've been able to buy one.

[jajaja]

Hehe, i actually thought about this some months ago, that if an item is hard to get and people see it in the store they buy it "just" because they know its hard to get.

[mailman187666]

I know how you feel. Its annoying enough that every time a new system comes out, everybody has to wait outside the stores overnight and whatnot. Then a few months later you are able to buy the system outright. Nintendo I believe is doing this on purpose to make everybody want one more. There is no reason for them to have a hard time meeting the demand for 6 year old hardware. Come on nintendo, keep your rep as the good guys.

[Clownzilla]

Nintendo should EASILY be able to make enough of these systems at this time. Even the most inefficient factory could fill up this much demand by now. Nintendo is starting to lose my support. Yeah, I can wait for a Wii, but I just don't like companies lying to the faces of their loyal customers.

[Hep038]

I assume as soon as they able to "keep up with demand" they will release Wii's in retro schemes which then those units will be "hard to find". Up to this point I believed Nintendo really did have a hard time keep units on the shelf. Now at I am starting to think this was a marketing scheme all along. I have a hard time believing that a company like Nintendo who has been in the video game business for as long as they have would be this incompetent at releasing a new system. IF the "shortage" runs through to Xmas, I am willing to bet after the new year they will release new Wii's in different color schemes.



I have to think if sony pulled something like this, the DP boards would be full of people calling BS on the shortages, even if the PS3's were selling like hotcakes.

[GM80]

While it can be dismissed as anecdotal evidence, I've never seen a Wii on a store shelf.

Ditto. I'm out gameshopping fairly often, and always frequent the electronics section of any store we visit, and I have yet to see a Wii in stock. Same for everyone I game with. I'm not convinced the dang thing actually exists. It's a conspiracy.

[exit]

We would get about 20+ Wii's in my store and they'd all get sold out within a few hours, so the demand is pretty high.

What he said may be an exaggeration, but it's not complete BS.

[ubersaurus]

Yeah, my buddy who works in an EB games pretty much did tell me they sell out of theirs fast and then get a bunch of people asking about it until the next shipment comes in.

That said I have seen it on shelves here, so they must be improving something.

[YoshiM]

I too do "Wii checks" when I'm at a department store. So far the space assigned to them is always empty. Friends of mine have seen a couple on a shelf but they are gone before they even leave the department.

[jcalder8]

We would get about 20+ Wii's in my store and they'd all get sold out within a few hours, so the demand is pretty high.

What he said may be an exaggeration, but it's not complete BS.

Yeah, my buddy who works in an EB games pretty much did tell me they sell out of theirs fast and then get a bunch of people asking about it until the next shipment comes in.

That said I have seen it on shelves here, so they must be improving something.

The problem with both of these statements is that we don't know why they are still selling so many. Lots of people want Wii's which mean even more people who want to turn a quick profit want Wii's. It could be that out of the 20 Wii's a store gets in only 3 or 4 go to customers who want to keep it for themselves.

On a side note I have seen 3 Wii's in stores so far. Once when I bought the one I found for my brother which a nice lady at Wal-mart called be about and I saw 2 at a Roger's video.

I'm also getting sick of Nintendo's self imposed shortage. I have little doubt that it is all being done by Nintendo. I was expecting this to end about 6 months ago but I guess there is still such a demand for them Nintendo feels it can squeeze more money out of people this way.

[norkusa]

7 months and I still haven't seen a single Wii yet. I'm starting to think that the shortage is being manufactured by Nintendo, just like their "chip shortage" back in the early 90's.


If Nintendo can't put more Wii's on store shelves soon, I may start looking at PS3's. The price drop and the new games announced for it is making it look pretty good now.

[classicb]

So out of the three consoles we have

Wii = "Wii: "If you see one, buy it." I call BS"

PS3 = "PS3 price drop NOT permanent?"

360 = "11.6 million 360 consoles are faulty"

seems like everybody is upset about something

edit: i will add that it is frustrating as a consumer that would like to buy one or more of these systems

[kaedesdisciple]

7 months and I still haven't seen a single Wii yet. I'm starting to think that the shortage is being manufactured by Nintendo, just like their "chip shortage" back in the early 90's.


If Nintendo can't put more Wii's on store shelves soon, I may start looking at PS3's. The price drop and the new games announced for it is making it look pretty good now.

Price drop? If that's your motivation, move quickly before the 60GB's with the EE are all off the shelves and we're stuck with the 80GB's @ $599.

[Hep038]

We would get about 20+ Wii's in my store and they'd all get sold out within a few hours, so the demand is pretty high.

What he said may be an exaggeration, but it's not complete BS.

How often do you get 20 Wii's? I do not work in retail so I am not sure what a regular shipment of consoles would be. 20 a month? 20 a week? If stores are getting 20 a week and they are selling out, then I would believe it is not complete BS. I guess you could compare it to NDS units. I assume they are still selling well and Nintendo is not have a problem keeping up with demand. So how many DS's come in a month and how many are sold?

[studvicious]

I really don't believe Nintendo is doing this on purpose. Aside from the one I bought on launch day I've only seen the Wii in a store ONCE. I was at a local Wal-Mart and they happened to have 7 of them on the shelf. Before I had left the store they were all gone.

Up until about 2 months ago I work at a Best Buy distribution center. We would get a boatload of Wiis about every 2 weeks that would pretty much go straight through. If we did stock any they would sit on the racks for a few days to a week at most. But for the most part as soon as we received them we would send all 3-5,000 of them out. (I think we serviced around 40-60 stores).

People are just nuts for it I guess.

[Kid Ice]

I had my money out for a Wii in December. I might have picked one up in Jan or Feb. By March I had a 360 and I'm too involved with that to start spending money on another system. When I do it'll be the same time I get a nice HDTV for the living room, so the PS3 will be a pretty obvious choice.

I doubt my position is that uncommon. It'll be interesting to see the final outcome of this when the smoke clears.

[calthaer]

I also believe, as mentioned earlier, that store employees (or friends) are holding some back and then putting them up on eBay (or Amazon, or wherever). It's an instant +$100 to their bank account - nice little perk, and I'm sure they can't be rolling in it by working retail. Maybe not the 25/30 that someone mentioned, but a fair number.

Best Buy recently got a bunch of them in, all on a Sunday. I had a friend check the store 20 mins south of me, and I checked the one 30 minutes north. The one up north got 30 in, the one south got like 10. When my friend got there, one store employee told him that there were 2 left in stock (they were not on the floor). But when he went to ask someone, they said they were "already sold." BUT they checked local stores, and the one up north still had 9.

Which were not there when I got there 10 minutes later, and apparently had been out of stock for 2+ hours.

I mean yeah - there could be a little bit of a delay in terms of updating inventory. But I'd be willing to bet that those 2 and those 9 were sitting pretty in the back for the end of the day when the employees could take them home and put them up for sale online at premium prices.

I don't need one; I certainly have enough of a backlog. The only one I'd really want to play is the Pokemon one, and that one doesn't even really have much to offer, as it's hardly a real game in itself. I can wait, and maybe by the time they get it in stock, I'll lose interest completely.

[WiseSalesman]

Man, if you consider Nintendo's attitude to be "horribly smug" I'd hate to hear what you think about Sony.