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The State Of Wii Preorders
1up has a hilarious article up looking at the state of Wii Preorders across the U.S.. Despite the fact that preorders began (and likely ended) this morning at EBs and Gamestops across the country, the employees of the megalithic game store were less than fully prepared. From the article: "WEST VIRGINIA: GameStop #1330: 'We don't know. I mean, we're gonna be doing reserves. We're just waiting for them to tell us we can.' WISCONSIN: EB Games #4626: 'It looks more like we'll just sell that one. Because there will be 2 to 4 million units available on launch day, and EB/GameStop will be getting 70% of them that first come first serve would be doable. Even a smaller store like ours could be getting upwards of 50 units day one.' WYOMING: EB Games #4294: 'Any day now, man. Any day now.'" Despite my wife's best efforts, I missed out on a preorder by three people in line. Stupid cross-country trips.
While the EBGames/Gamestop pre-order is making news, they can't be the only store doing pre-orders. At some point stores like Walmart, Target, BestBuy, FutureShop, etc. will start pre-ordering. The question is, has anyone heard news on when? Where? How many?
The 'state of Wii Pre-orders' shouldn't be limited to one chain. It should count all chains. The 1up article is a bit limited in scope (however, still an interesting/funny read).
If Zelda, WarioWare, Wii Sports, Excite Truck, etc, haven't gotten you excited yet, then stick with your current console(s). Different people like different games, and you'll just be disappointed if you buy a console become other people say it's cool.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
There is nothing revolutionary about the horsepower, graphical abilities or capabilities.
There is not even anything special about the controller. That's not the point. (Sony and MS will make competing controllers that will probaly be better. i.e more sensitive, better range, more buttons, etc)
The point is (and this is the MAJOR point of every Console in the history of consoles)...
the Wii controller comes in the box!
why is this so important?
people don't buy add-on hardware for their consoles. that's the whole point of a console. you buy the "gaming Appliance" bring it home and play games with it.
developers never know how many "Console Owners" will have "X-Add-on" so they will never design a game for that add-on.
developers will know that every Wii has at least one Wii-mote. period.
If you've already read the game list, I doubt anybody will have anything to add. It's not as if anybody has played these games to speak of, or at least anybody allowed to talk about it. (A couple of hours of "hands-on preview" doesn't count.)
I'm interested in the Wii, moreso than the XBox 360 or the PS3. But I'm going to be "sticking with the PS2" myself for a while. For one thing, there's still a good 10 games that I'm interested in, and I have a Real Job so it takes a while to get through them. Fortunately, they're pretty cheap now, especially if you buy them used and sell them back after a reasonable period of time. I've played kick-ass AAA-quality games from two years ago for a net-outlay of about $8 over three or four months, which beats even rental.
While somebody needs to buy the Wii, I don't think there's any compelling reason to run right out there and be first on your block unless you've done everything you want on your existing consoles.
Because for as excited and intrigued as I am, the fact remains that the Wii is highly experimental and it may yet be one dumb-assed idea, and I don't think there's a problem in waiting for somebody else to find that out, while you continue to mine the deepest, richest vein of console video games ever on the PS2. (And those PS2 game's prices aren't going up, although finding them may become an increasing challenge.) I for one will not buy a Wii until I've actually used one, either in a store or preferably at somebody else's house.
(Also, my wife got a DS, and there's a couple of things coming out for that that we have to get. Yoshii's Island 2 is going to be a rare release-date purchase for us, and we just got Mario Kart which is going to keep us occupied for a while. And the new Zelda piques my interest... it's been a long time since I've played a Zelda, and I think both the 3D and the 2D branches of Zelda have their own charms.)
They'er going to have my favorite game: resell on eBay for double the price!
The sequel is also good: Buy another a few weeks later.
Three reasons.
1: Interest on $50,000,000 for a month (You really think the costs of running the pre-order operation for a day are going to exceed $4 million?)
2: Gets the customer into the store two times, increasing the opportunity for additional sales
3: Requires the customer to provide personal information that they can sell
Why isn't it making news that your pre-order at gamestop or EB doesn't guarantee you a console, even if you are sufficiently to the front of the line.
What are people paying $50 for? If they want money, I'd better get a guarantee, or at least more that $50 back when they're telling me they aren't actually going to sell me the machine I pre-ordered.
This is unconfirmed. A Nintendo executive did give a number, but then another (presumably more important) executive said he was wrong.
That's the answer to all of your questions, actually: Nintendo won't tell EB (or anyone) how many consoles they're getting. EB really wants to avoid a situation where they oversell preorders, so they're being very conservative with their preorder allotment. If rumours are accurate, most EB stores will take preorders for 10-20 consoles, and will receive a shipment of 3-4 times that many for release day.
There is a very good reason for not raising prices, if the Wii or the PS3 was priced higher, then while those companies would make more money, some people would be turned off by the high price and buy an XBOX 360. And once someone already owns a 360 they are less likely to buy another console in the future because of the investment. By pricing the PS3 and Wii lower than demand, instead of buying a 360 people may wait for the other consoles to become available. Also, optimal pricing is hard to predict, like the 360 in Japan (which got a small fraction of consoles compared to North America) and the PSP didn't sell out at launch.
Why could I pre-order a Gamecube in July in 2001 at Futureshop, and a month before the system launches I still can't pre-order at Futureshop or Best Buy?
Back in July 2001, Futureshop hadn't yet been screwed by the demand for the Xbox 360 far outstripping the available supply. The more preorders the store takes and is unable to fulfill, the more disgruntled customers there are. Better to avoid taking preorders, and thus disappointing many people.