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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.'"
I just don't understand how they could not have for seen this shortage. I mean last year the same thing happened and they said then they would be ready for this year. Yet here we are. I have friends, family and co-workers asking me where they can get thier hands on a Wii. It really makes me wonder about the rumors of intentional shorting. From a business point it would make no sense to short your sales. From a marketing point however it's been brilliant. Wii is all the rage and is likely so popular BECAUSE it's hard to get. Nothing lights a fire under middle American purchasing power like that hard to get must have Christmas gift.
If people decide to buy something else instead, and never end up buying a Wii, then it is money lost. However, I think that a high percentage of people will just end up buying it later, once units become available. Also, if the buy it later, the cost to produce a Wii might have come down, and Nintendo may end up making more profit per unit. That could yield them even more money in the end.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I have the solution to solving the holiday product crunch: spread the holidays out over the calendar. In the USA, divide the country up into 12 regions of about the same population and economics. Then assign each region a different month to have the gift giving holidays. Most people don't celebrate Christmas religiously, anymore, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.
The above does still leave a big crunch at stores and malls within a region. So maybe it's better to divide things up on a micro-scale instead of a macro-scale. So, how about celebrating the gift giving holiday based on (zipcode % 12), where you celebrate gift giving based on your zip code modulo 12 to choose the month.
This still means a big crunch for families and neighbors in the same zip code. So I have a better idea. Let's use the date of birth to determine when to celebrate the gift giving holiday, based on who the gift is for. And instead of having it all on one day of the month, let's spread it out further and use the actual date in the date of birth for everyone's own personalized gift giving holiday.
Ooops. I didn't take into account February 29. Never mind.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars