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Nintendo Refutes Wii Shortage
Nintendo has responded to accusations leveled against it earlier this week by GameStop, saying that Wii shortages are due to demand. Nintendo's George Harrison told Next-Gen.biz in a phone interview that "That's not at all the case. We have worldwide territories that are all competing over the available production. The Japan and European markets are doing extremely well with the Wii. People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when." An EU marketing director is also quoted at GamesIndustry.biz responding to criticism about the lack of new Wii titles, as well as the supply shortage. Nintendo's Laurent Fischer asserts that the company has a 'release it when it's ready' attitude, and that they'll release products when they meet the company's standards.
"People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when."
Well I like to take the ignorant and arrogant stance of "It should be in MY market, and it should be here NOW." Unfortunately my talks with these companies are not going so well...
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
I think it says volumes about how far removed from the realities of engineering your average "business person" is that releasing something when it's done is viewed as some kind of rogue attitude.
I would rather have 80% fewer games released every year, if each game was well crafted by a team with full creative control who were passionate about what they were working on and had ample time to finish. The only thing releasing a deluge of unfinished but in-time-for-christmas junk accomplishes is it lines the pocket of the kinds of sharks the industry could do without.
Lets look at the numbers, depending on who you go through:
http://nexgenwars.com/
360 - 10.8M
PS3 - 2.3M
Wii - 5.3M
http://www.vgcharts.org/ngwars.php
360 - 9.8M
PS3 - 2.8M
Wii - 6.3M
so yeah, I can definitely see how they are holding back on production given that the system has been out for 4 months now and selling 1.5M a month. Could you imagine if they weren't holding back?