Woman Killed In Wii-Related Competition

snuffin writes to tell us that a local radio competition to "hold your wee for a Wii" has ended with a Sacramento woman dead from water poisoning. From the article: "An Associated Press interview with another contestant, named James Ybarra, claimed that contestants were initially given eight ounce bottles of water to drink every fifteen minutes, with larger bottles being used once contestants began to drop out. According to Ybarra, 'They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk.' He described the victim as 'a nice lady' and that 'she was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids.'"

Comments

Dumb contest, stupid people...

[__aaclcg7560]

They should've have the contestants hold their breath so it would be obvious when they turned blue that something was wrong. I don't think that would change the outcome of the contest.

Re:Killed??

[GiovanniZero]

Please, you can still find Wii's. The lady sounds like she did it because, surprise surpise, it was free! Everyone likes to win stuff. There would have been a similar result if they offered an xbox 360 or anything else. Further more, Nintendo doesn't have anything to gain by making the Wii scarce. This isn't Debeers and Nintendo doesn't get any more money per unit because people are having a hard time finding it. The truth is that the Wii has been more successful than Nintendo imagined. If you cater to the lowest common denominator you're only going to lower the standard. I'm not talking about the down trodden, I'm talking about behavior. If you treat people like idiots then they will be idiots. It's silly to expect businesses to look for such far reaching effects. It costs too much. Besides do you think Nintendo should have had a think tank saying "ok, what if the Wii is widely succesfull and then its hard to get that a radio station has a competition to give one away. Then, what if that competition is to drink water without urninating. Imagine, what if one person drinks so much water that they actually overdose and die of the stuff. I don't think we should release the Wii because that risk is way too high!"