Slashdot Mirror
Where are Wii?
WirePosted writes "Santa is in trouble, it looks like supplying the Christmas need for a Nintendo Wii game console is in jeopardy as stocks wither under constant and heavy demand. Conspiracy believers suggest this is an orchestrated move on behalf of Nintendo." Since this happens to be what I want for Christmas, I hope they work it out, or my loving wife has already found one.
There are lots of Wiis in stock in shops in Sweden. Where do you want them sent?
... )
(Seriously, I have no idea what Nintendo is up to, but claiming there's a severe shortage of PAL Wiis in the UK with lots of PAL Wiis available in other countries - only the plug on the AC adapter differs - doesn't sound right. Add a firmware flash and then the same hardware would become NTSC
it's in my head
I think some people may end up still holding them after the holidays though
Yeah, but most of them won't be out any significant amounts of money though, because they will simply return them the day after Christmas. Last year I went to Best Buy the day after Christmas because my mom bought me the wrong Simpsons season on DVD, so I had to wait in the return line. I noticed that almost everyone in front of me was returning ps3s. I bet that most of them were people who bought the ps3 to try to sell for a few grand on ebay, and when they didn't sell they went straight to best buy to recoup their $600. So most of the resellers probably consider it a no-risk investment on their part.
Monstar L
Be careful with the latter option. Sony has made quite a few changes to PS3 backward compatibility with PS2, ranging from supporting it in hardware on some models, to supporting it by software emulation in others, to dropping it completely in still others.
I took a business class in which Nintendo was used as real world example for how they controlled prices for a release of Zelda. If I remember correctly it went something like this:
Nintendo tells retailers "we're going to produce X amount by Christmas, give us your orders." Wal-Mart tells them, "we're big and will sell a lot of games, give us a huge number of them at a ridiculously low price. Otherwise, we won't carry it and you won't sell enough of them to make any money."
Nintendo hates this, of course. So, they cut back sharply on production of the game. Closer to Christmas they tell the retailers, "oops, we only have Y amount. It's not enough for what we already know everybody wants. Give us your desired quantities with your _best_ price in Z days."
Walmart just lost their leverage. Nintendo sells fewer cartridges but at a significantly better price than Walmart was offering. Not as good as they originally wanted but better than Walmart's offer.
Something similar is probably happening here. The Wii could easily move in huge volume but the retailers would want a lower price. As long as:
you'll have a hard time finding a Wii.
The hell with this cheap consumer idiocracy! Just for the record, my GF tossed my second wiimote 5 meters high while bowling, and dropped it on the floor. It works great right now. The other one was used to break a big glass lamp fixture, and remains scratchless (the same can't be said about the HP laptop sitting underneath, wich now quilifies as "scratchs and dents").
Greenpeace complains about Nintendo using too tough plastics on the WII. Maybe that happens because they are intended to last.