Where are all the Wii's?

[Shannon]

I slipped by the local BB, CC, and Target after getting off work this morning. Not a single person waiting. Dropped by BB near my work around 7pm, not a single wii to be seen. Those 15 boxes of PS3's stacked up in the front sure looked purty though.

[Room 34]

I was at Target today, and I noticed the sign in the empty Wii case was different now. It used to say "Due to high demand, we currently have no Wii hardware in stock" or something like that, but now it said "Due to high demand, we cannot offer rainchecks on Wii hardware. Limit 1 unit per customer." Or something to that effect.

 

I guess the stuff people were saying about Wii being in this week's circular, and stores saving up units for this morning, must have been true. (I don't get a newspaper, so I wouldn't know.)

[Crazy Climber]

I will admit that I have not been relentless in my pursuit of the Wii. But in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, they seem nowhere to be found.

 

These days it's pretty common to see signs practically screaming "WE HAVE THE PS3 IN STOCK!!!!!!!!!" (but with more exclamation points) at many places. Just today I saw PS3's in stock at both EB Games and Toys 'R' Us. But I still have never once, anywhere, ever, seen a Wii except the ones in the display cases.

 

Is this unusual? Am I living in a Wii black hole and didn't realize it?

You are correct about the Twin Cities being dry of Wii's man, I check every weekend with ZERO luck. I also see plenty of PS3's but no Wii's!!!

It can be a little frusterating...I don't think I've ever been this excited to get a new game system and I can't even buy one. Oh well they will be for sale some day

[Mendon]

I think a lot of Wii's are still ending up on eBay. I glanced thru the Wii section on Saturday & there were less than 2,000 listed items. Today, Monday, there are over 5,000 items there and it appears that the majority of them are consoles. I would bet that a lot of people bought them from BB, Target, TRU, etc Sunday and put them right up on eBay.

 

Plus there are quite a few console listings where the same seller has multiple auctions going... I noticed one guy (can't recall name) had 11 separate auctions going for consoles, all with a BIN of $379.00 and all of them had bids for more than the Wii's MSRP.

 

As long as the supply line from Nintendo to the stores is small and resellers believe they can make a profit on eBay, the system will continue to be hard to find.

 

Mendon

Edited January 22, 2007 by Mendon

[Dutchman2000]

This is total bullshit. Nintendo needs to step up and meet demand and publicly denounce ebay sales.

[Lord Helmet]

This is total bullshit. Nintendo needs to step up and meet demand and publicly denounce ebay sales.

 

I'm sure they are cranking them out as fast as they can.

 

I went through this same deal when the PS2 came out. Learned my lesson. Now, I preorder systems if I really want one...an dI preorder them early so I'm sure to get one. Havn't missed out on a launch since, except for the ps3, but I'm not ready to take the $600 plunge until there are a bunch of games for it that I want to play that aren't available on the 360.

[Shannon]

I dunno.. From the sounds of it alot of pre-orders were either cancelled or did not get met.

 

That being said it'd really suck of the ebayers are snagiing these things up. Idiots. I slipped by my local best buy today on the miniscule chance there might be a wii there, no luck. I noticed the PS3's they had there were actually gone finally. Either they sold or BB shipped them up to the one near my work in hopes they would sell there. (larger population area).

[CPUWIZ]

Just came back from Target, their entire showcase was full of Wii's, 2 PS3's for sale. I think this whole thing is totally random.

[jbanes]

Just came back from Target, their entire showcase was full of Wii's, 2 PS3's for sale.

It's about friggin' time they started showing up somewhere. This demand has been nothing short of crazy!

[Shannon]

Well I was having trouble sleeping today so I decided to run by target and takes a looksey. Surprisingly they had 2 Wii's sitting there! Now there is only one left.

 

 

Hugs his Wii.... Uhhh I guess that didn't come out right did it?

 

Anyways just as I was walking to the counter to pay for it some other guy comes stumbling by and said "That's not the last one is it?". So by the time I left both were gone. Talking to the guy at the register he said that 6 Wii's came in that morning. So they were pretty much gone by 3pm.

 

There was on PS3 sitting in the case. For all I know it could have been the one I saw a few weeks ago.

[Bruce Tomlin]

I missed out on Sunday. I bet on Target having some, and they opened first too. However, thanks to the ice storm last week, they didn't get in their shipment during the middle of the previous week. Why nobody bothered to get the load shipped for Friday or Saturday is stupid, but by that time it was too late to go anywhere else.

 

Meh, more Sega Genesis hacking for me.

[AtariJr]

This is total bullshit. Nintendo needs to step up and meet demand and publicly denounce ebay sales.

 

its not bullshit.. they shipped out more wii's than gamecubes for thier launch.. everyone and thier mother could find a cube, nintendo simply was cuaght off gaurd..didnt know how big this system woudl be. this is different than sony who PURPOSELY made stock short (not including the blue ray problems) to drive demand. ironically, for the first time, this backfired on them, as with 360's on the shelf, and Wii's in such high demand, the lack of ps3's on the shelves (coupled a lack of lack titles) really hurt sony. you should be happy nintnedo is busting them out as fast as they can, and had a resepectable number at launch. if you wanted one so bad, you shoudl have froze yoru ass off in novemeber like the rest of us did for a pre-order ^^

[King_Salamon]

This is total bullshit. Nintendo needs to step up and meet demand and publicly denounce ebay sales.

 

its not bullshit.. they shipped out more wii's than gamecubes for thier launch.. everyone and thier mother could find a cube, nintendo simply was cuaght off gaurd..didnt know how big this system woudl be. this is different than sony who PURPOSELY made stock short (not including the blue ray problems) to drive demand. ironically, for the first time, this backfired on them, as with 360's on the shelf, and Wii's in such high demand, the lack of ps3's on the shelves (coupled a lack of lack titles) really hurt sony. you should be happy nintnedo is busting them out as fast as they can, and had a resepectable number at launch. if you wanted one so bad, you shoudl have froze yoru ass off in novemeber like the rest of us did for a pre-order ^^

 

Out of curiosity... where exactly did you freeze your ass off? Just trying to see where you live and how cold it was (or wasn't).

[Bilnick]

Nintendo really screwed up by not shipping enough systems. According to 1up.com, apparently they manufactured 4 million consoles in 2006, but only shipped 3.2 million. As much as people (correctly) bash Sony, at least they have figured out how to meet demand for thier console.....

 

What's a little more puzzling is Nintendo's reveal that they produced over 4 million Wii consoles by the end of 2006, but only shipped roughly 3.2 million to retail. We've heard that Nintendo avoided expensive air shipments Sony so publicly publicized (then again, they really needed the numbers), but clearly Nintendo's having no trouble keeping up with demand -- they just need to ship more!

 

 

I still want to get a Wii, but since I recently bought Zelda for the Gamecube, there is very little incentive for me to make any extra effort to try and find one. The game libraries for the PS3 and Wii are pretty weak at the moment.

[jbanes]

Nintendo really screwed up by not shipping enough systems. According to 1up.com, apparently they manufactured 4 million consoles in 2006, but only shipped 3.2 million. As much as people (correctly) bash Sony, at least they have figured out how to meet demand for thier console.....

1Up is wrong. Nintendo sent out 4 million units, but only 3.19 million made it to stores before the end of 2006.

 

http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/01/2...-games-sold.htm

 

Nintendo manufactured 4 million Wii systems by the end of 2006 and during that time sold and delivered 3.19 million to its distributors and retail customers around the world, the other 810,000 are slowly arriving at stores now. So they expect another 2.81 million to be sold in the first three months of 2007.

They had them, but they didn't manage to move them through the pipeline fast enough. It happens. Especially when you consider that 4 million units inside one and a half months is a LOT of inventory to move. I'd say that Nintendo did exceptionally well under the circumstances. They certainly didn't create any shortages intentionally.

 

For comparison, think of poor Al trying to get all those Toyshop Trouble cartridges out. ~200 carts is a LOT of inventory for one man to manufacture, test, pack, and ship. Is there any wonder he ended up slightly behind on it? But we all understood and waited patiently rather than coming up with "artificial shortage" theories to explain why he wasn't shipping them faster.