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Nintendo May Pull Wii Ads To Avoid Hype

Posted by Zonk on from the very-merry dept.

Due to the lack of product on store shelves and overwhelming demand, Nintendo is considering plans to pull marketing campaigns for the Wii during the holiday season. "The company recently dismissed suggestions that it intentionally engineered shortages to build up hype for the Wii. It claims to be producing 1.8 million of the consoles each month at full capacity. 'The issue of supply management has to be questioned, not least because 2008 is going to be the crunch year for the Wii. It's then that we'll discover whether it's a fad or something with legs,' Screen Digest analyst Piers Harding-Rolls told The Times."

13 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. oh good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully next year we'll find out if the iPod is just a fad or if it has legs too. How long does something have to be popular to officially not be called a fad?

    1. Re:oh good by p0tat03 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a "fad" so long as a minority group of people can act smug and self-righteous about not going with the flow :)

    2. Re:oh good by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 4, Funny
      Hopefully next year we'll find out if the iPod is just a fad or if it has legs too. How long does something have to be popular to officially not be called a fad?

      In other news, I hear that internet thing is going like gangbusters.

    3. Re:oh good by stormguard2099 · · Score: 5, Funny

      man, you just pissed off a lot of linux users...

      --
      http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
    4. Re:oh good by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As opposed to the minority who act all smug and self-righteous because they have the latest cool gadget?

  2. Shut It Down! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I heard Nintendo was going to shut down production altogether just to save themselves from the massive demand and large amounts of cash that would be thrown at them.

    Talk about fates worse than death!

  3. Re:Its... by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh wii-ly?

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  4. 1.8milions by Bibz · · Score: 4, Informative

    1.8 milions a wii a month is a lot. It's 41 wii per minute, but still not enough for everyone.

    An other interesting number from TFA:
    "The Wii has outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 each by more than two-to-one this year."

    --
    I didn't found something funny to put here.
  5. Uh... old? by orclevegam · · Score: 5, Informative

    Last I saw The Register was running an article that said Nintendo had already pulled the ads.
    The Register Article

    --
    Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
  6. Then why not redirect some of those funds... by Millennium · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since Nintendo is pulling its hardware ads, why not put some proper marketing on its games? Seriously; the only Nintendo game I've even seen a magazine ad for in over a year was Fire Emblem, and I only saw that one in comic books. If Nintendo wants to reach casual gamers, then it needs to start promoting its ads in places casual gamers go, and hardcore-gaming venues just don't fit that description. Word of mouth alone won't make a million seller.

  7. Re:Makes sense by EggyToast · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I agree with you, except that Coke is a beverage; their advertising isn't to get people to buy a singular item, but to get people to think "Hey, a Coke, I should drink one."

    I see lots of billboards around bus stops with, say, 3 empty cans of coke that say "3 hour meeting" or something witty. Their advertising is trying to get people to drink more of their product. Arguably, those people are already coke drinkers -- they just don't drink enough for Coca-Cola.

    People only buy one Wii, though, and if everyone is buying all they can make, they don't need to advertise. Coke, though, there's always coke on the shelf, so there's always more to sell.

  8. Re:Flipping Wii's by EMeta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    EBay Wii resellers are just an inevitable part of the economics of capitalism. If this was a commodity, the price would rise instantly as demand started to approach supply. Here, Demand far exceeds supply, so the MSRP is an artificial price ceiling. If I was in the market for a Wii and didn't have the time to search for one, I would appreciate that there was service charge I could opt to pay for someone else to find one for me. In other words, why the hostility towards the trade?

  9. Re:I don't blame them by Fex303 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why waste advertising money on something that is flying off the shelves? Once once sales start slowing down they can redouble their advertising efforts and get the "hype" machine moving again.
    Disclaimer: I work in advertising. (You can save yourselves the Bill Hicks quote, I know it.) I would suggest that the main reason to keep advertising when your product is doing well is to make sure that the 'hype machine' keeps moving. Hype/word-of-mouth/top-of-mind awareness/coolness is very difficult to get and even harder to keep. By the time you realize that people don't think you're awesome (which happens before sales slow), it's too late - you've been overtaken and someone else has taken the momentum in the eyes of the public. Now, I would argue that Nintendo could afford to shift their spending somewhat, or possibly change the message that they're getting across, since they seem have managed to get the message that they are fun for everyone into the public perception extremely well. But cutting spending too much when a product is going well is a common mistake that leads to strong brands falling into irrelevance quite swiftly.