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Wii Owners Looking at a Nintendo Drought?
The site Computer and Videogames has up an (unverifiable article) stating that several anticipated Wii titles are going to be delayed until late 2007. Specifically, they mention Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as being out of our hands until the Christmas season next year. They report this information via 'reliable sources', and Nintendo is unwilling to confirm or deny the claims as of yet. N'Gai at Newsweek reminds us that Reggie Fils-Aime denied the possibility of a 'Nintendo drought' in an interview they conducted back in October. Here's hoping he doesn't live to regret these words: "... The third example I would give you is Mario Galaxy, another from-the-ground-up Wii game that we are strategically timing the launch to make sure that we continue driving momentum through 2007. So N'Gai, how do I answer the question, 'Will there be no drought,' and 'How will we make sure that there are fantastic titles for Wii?' The answer is Zelda, Metroid and Mario. Which is a pretty darn good lineup."
Who cares about the new games? Question is: will every NES game I have in my basement be re-released so I can pay for it again and play it without spending 3 hours trying to get my old (3) NES to work?? The adapters for the controllers are already being made, all I need to do is $250 for the Wii, $? for the adapters, $? for near mint NES controllers, and $5 and I'll be playing Super Mario Bros. like it's 1985.
Haiku for you!
I stopped by GameStop trying to get a second nunchuk for Wii Boxing and he said the second wave of Wii shipments was sold out in 10 minutes flat. He's had several people return PS3's now that they aren't getting the prices they expected on ebay only to have the next transaction in the register be someone buying the PS3, to try to sell on the internet.
I find it strangely curious and sad that the holiday season has spawned a new industry of parasites. People who will buy up whatever the hot toy is only to put it up for an online auction trying to make a massive profit off someone who couldn't buy it in the store because everyone who bought one got it with the intention of selling it on ebay.
The answer to your question is:
Your Wii is now up for auction on the internet, once supply picks up, it will be returned to the store after its temporarily inflated value goes back down.
Sorry, I'm not too concerned about the purported Wii blockbuster game drought.
I'm too busy playing my GameCube version of Sims 2: Pets on my Wii, while my son plays his GameCube Super Smash Brothers on it.
Between that and all the fine games, I'm just hoping to have a chance to finish Rayman's Raving Rabbids myself (my son's already a World Champion), let alone delve into Excite Truck or Zelda that he's already mastered.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The funny thing is the PS3 "drought" is less than the Wii drought. I know a couple people who would start a bidding war if I had a second Wii. But ps3 are starting to sit on shelves. Not for days exactly, but when you consider that they have sold around a fifth as many PS3 as Wiis, and the Wiis sales are still going strong? It's an impressive system.
As for the story however CVG has three problems. A. They are in Europe, not America. B. They have no real proof they just claim to have an insider. C. "drought"? you mean a drought because it's a launch system and there might be "only" 1-2 nintendo brand games a month? There's a LOT of games coming to the wii, yet they are holding back on release dates. I wouldn't be suprised if we have 5-6 good to great games by March (in 2007 only) and double that before august. We know about Sonic, and Mortal Kombat Armegeddon, Wario Ware, and Wii play. Plus realize that if there's slow monthes or weeks, they have stated they will release some of the best games for the VC at that time.
"Drought" Not bloody likely. More like "sunny days with out a chance of rain".
The problem is that the Wii launch, constitutes almost the entire production from Nintendo game studios over the last couple years, cause they sure weren't making Gamecube games. I'm sure they have a Mario and Metroid game in 2007, but what has Nintendo done to prevent a drought after that? The real problem is that Nintendo consoles still rely on Nintendo providing all the games worth playing and they just don't make them fast enough, for a broad enough market, or even at the same level as in the past. The reason the PS1 or PS2 was consistent was not cause of Sony's games, but cause of 3rd parties.
3rd party Developers are not looking at the Wii as a place to make new creative games - why do it on old technology? The Wii is going to be looked at as a dumping ground or a place to make a cheap buck. PS2/XBOX ports, new levels on an old engine, rework the control scheme and push it out the door. Look at the Wii version of Far Cry or the fact that the 'new' Wii Prince of Persia is actually the OLD Prince of Persia (with NEW control scheme!) that came out last year for examples of this.
These horses are far from dead.
The last Zelda and Mario games that came out, I bought both of 'em on launch day. New SMB I finished in a weekend, though it took me a long while to find every level and get the three-star save file. Twilight Princess - well, I'm at just over 30 hours since the UK launch on December 8th, and I just completed the Snowpeak quest. Died twice early on, only once been seriously threatened since then.
These games have been fairly easy, because I'm extremely good at them. For this I have to thank some 20 years of experience. But they're both of them excellent games, at least as good as anything else you'll find on the shelves. My experience of their forebears means I pick up the new game much more quickly, but it doesn't make it any less a great game.
A new Zelda or Mario isn't like a new Madden or even a new Championship Manager. It's not just a reissue of the same basic game with prettier graphics. It's the same underlying mechanism, sure, and with recurring characters, but it's always a new world to explore.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I guess it is part of the market as people can do something legal to make money.
However, no real productive work has been done, it is just people competing by lining up, holding products and then trying to sell them again.
Originally people who valued the Wii at $200 more than the sticker price would have had that as a kind of happiness bonus over what they paid. Now that "bonus $200" has been extracted from them, people are spending their lives lining up and selling them etc.
A good example of how GDP can go up but there is a net-negative to the world (people spend time in lines, people don't get as good a bargain as they would have)
Same thing happened to me. I've been going to BB everyday during lunch looking for a wii and have had a couple opportunities to buy a ps3. Still don't have my wii though.
Yes, but how much of the scarcity is due to over-speculation?
It would seem the "free market" has corrected the price. Both the Gamestop and Walmart near me have 6 PS3s a piece, inquiring about them it would seem that they got a shipment in of a few units, and none of them sold... after which they each had a few units RETURNED from eBay profiteers who couldn't turn a profit on them.
I have a friend who tried to do the eBay thing, he preordered two units at different stores, and waited in line at a 3rd. Launch night he put them all up on eBay, all three ended for about $2K... all dead beat bidders, he re-listed, all three ended at about $1.2K all dead beat bidders, he listed a third time and all three ended around $900, two of the three were dead beat bidders, He decided to just keep one himself and the last one he's re-listing hoping to at least break even... I suspect many others experienced the same thing. Dead beat bidders probably came from the fact that prices started so enormously and dropped so fast that they'd rather suffer negative feed back then pay the price delta between when they placed their bid and when it came time to pay.
It's not like this is surprising though, if you just polled any of the PS3 lines on launch day 9 out of 10 would have told you they were going to re-sell it... if you have a market of all sellers and no buyers it devalues the item pretty quick.
Collector's Edition
Cool - can I use that argument when I'm arrested by the cops in front of the ballpark next time I'm scalping tickets? Fucking communists interfereing with the freemarket. Fuck them in the ear!
Note the original poster's point: "Supply is low" because of scalpers (who have no intention of actually using the product) waiting on line to grab the PS3s before legitimate buyers can.
Scalping isn't an instance of "the free market", it's actually an attempt to profit through interference with the processes of the free market. So yes: "Parasites" is actually an excellent choice of word.
Don't get confused, there are two free markets here. A PS3 market and a labor market.
Supply of PS3 is not "low". Low is a relative word that requires comparison to something else. There is simply a quantity of PS3s for sale and a quantity of demand for those PS3s. The supply and demand set a fair price. This is basic economics taught at the high school level.
Labor is work. It is a free market where high demand and low supply workers clear at higher prices (i.e. get higher salaries).
Example 1: high priced CEOs don't write computer software. Instead they hire (relatively) lower priced programmers to write the software for them.
Example 2: high priced computer programmers don't wait in line. Instead they hire (relatively) lower priced line-waiters to stand in line for them.
You can call these line-waiters scalpers or parasites all you want. But don't tell me that they're interfering with the process of the free market.