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Wii Shortages Costing Nintendo 'A Billion' In Sales
A New York Times article from this past Friday highlights the 'problem' that Nintendo is facing: more people want to give them money than they can handle. Analysts quoted in the story discussing Nintendo's unique Wii shortage problem indicate that the company could be selling twice the 1.8 million consoles a month it ships. All told, these same individuals believe the company could be leaving as much as $1 billion on the table this holiday season. "'We don't feel like we've made any mistakes,' said George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America. He said there was a shortage because the company must plan its production schedule five months ahead, and projecting future demand is difficult. He added that there had been a worldwide shortage of disk drives that had hurt Nintendo as well as makers of many other devices. 'It's a good problem to have,' Mr. Harrison said of the demand, but he acknowledged that there could be a downside. 'We do worry about not satisfying consumers and that they will drift to a competitor's system.'"
When people try to justify downloading music, they say it's okay because they wouldn't have bought the album in the first place, which means that no money was lost in the process.
Wouldn't the same kind of logic hold here? How can Nintendo lose money on nonexistent consoles if they're already at full production?
Goo goo g'joob.
"I just don't understand how they could not have for seen this shortage."
In the space of a year, Nintendo sold 14 million consoles. That's more than the 360 sold in 2 years. Historically, consoles don't hit 10 mill in a year.
"It really makes me wonder about the rumors of intentional shorting."
The Wii was a surprise hit. The surprise wasn't that it's a hit, but that it was such a massive hit. Even the biggest Nintendo fanboy wouldn't have expected nearly this many sales the first year. The Playstation didn't even manage that and Nintendo's last couple of consoles didn't even come close.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
There was an article ages ago about this, and the Nintendo guy said something I thought was very telling about their attitude to customers. He said they were ramping up production as far as they could, but to stretch the supply chains any further would mean dealing with component manufacturers and suppliers they neither knew nor trusted. Yes, the result would be a larger supply of Wiis, but a much higher percentage of defective machines; either as soon as the customer got it home, or soon after purchase. They didn't want that to be associated with their brand, and said they'd rather manufacture less consoles, and have them work properly, and hope people would be patient and understand.
Compare and contrast Microsoft's attitude of denying the problem for ages, then setting aside billions to handle defective machines under extended warranty. My Wii's seen daily use since launch date - all I've ever had to do was change batteries in the Wiimote. If it does break down, I'm stuffed as far as getting another one is concerned, at least for a few more weeks.