Wii not going to meet demand..again.

[Atari5200]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6180167.html

 

ok. don't really understand this. especially the last paragraph. Coming from a background in manufacturing, the only thing I can think of is that Nintendo doesn't want to either pay their workers to produce the quantities needed or they don't want to pay the component makers to produce the quantities needed. Those are the only 2 logical choices that I can think of. If you can't meet production, then you ramp up production, you hire temporary help on the production floor and you look for more manufacturers of components. My company has 2 or 3 different manufacturers of product to ensure that at any given time there is plenty of stock on hand. So Nintendo is going to allow consumers that would originally want a Wii, have an option of 360/ps2/ps3 because they won't have stock? I don't understand if Nintendo is making the billions of dollars of profit, why wouldn't they ramp up production?

 

I do wish the article went into more detail, i'd like to know the specifics behind this as it just doesn't make sense. I understand it's a hot item, but you compensate for that, there's no compensation at all it seems, they seem content with not enough supply to meet demand, and that is puzzling.

[mimo]

Well, it's either marketing bollox to get people to buy asap, or a total cock up at Nintendo which will push people to buy a different product.

I| really don't understand this situation, I can buy as many PAL Wii's as I want no problem.

[RickHarrisMaine]

You know, this annoys me to no end.....

 

I've seen a few Wii's in the wild as of late, and haven't yet felt compelled to buy, I've been so annoyed with Nintendo over this.....

 

And my Gamecube is still plenty fun....

[SINGLE TOOTH]

Yeah, there is no reason to STILL be hard to find a Wii. THey are totally milking it. I would start pumping them out though. It's been out almost a year already??? Come on!

 

But last time I went to both Wal-mart and Target, there were plenty of Wiis avalible.

[Lord Helmet]

It's called fabricating demand. Companies do it all the time. Not just Nintendo.

[Pixelboy]

My (very basic, inexperienced, yet not totally illogical) business intuition tell me that Nintendo doesn't want to invest in an increased production capability because it would impact on the end profit made on each system sold. I imagine that Nintendo's logic is "We'd rather minimize our production costs by keeping them as they are now, and keep the same profit margin on each system sold, because it's not necessary to meet the demand of the holiday shopping season since consumers will keep buying Wiis well after Christmas anyway."

 

The Wal-Mart store near my job is STILL selling all their Wiis mere hours after they receive their weekly shipment. It's been that way ALL YEAR, since last Christmas! For for Nintendo, it's really Christmas all year 'round, so why sweat it with the actual Christmas season?

[n8littlefield]

I'm seeing them more and more. Places like Sears & Kmart have a pretty high chance of having them in stock, and I've seen them at Walmart & Toys r Us 2 or 3 times in the past month alone. Nintendo is still making over 1 million a month, they expect to sell 14 million this year alone. There's always a bottleneck though - and if they ramp up too much they do risk overproduction.

 

If anything, at least they are giving people a heads up now so you can try to pick one up early as opposed to some nuts Black Friday promotion with the crazy folks

[MCHufnagel]

My (very basic, inexperienced, yet not totally illogical) business intuition tell me that Nintendo doesn't want to invest in an increased production capability because it would impact on the end profit made on each system sold. I imagine that Nintendo's logic is "We'd rather minimize our production costs by keeping them as they are now, and keep the same profit margin on each system sold, because it's not necessary to meet the demand of the holiday shopping season since consumers will keep buying Wiis well after Christmas anyway."

Considering how conservative a business model Nintendo has, this sounds very logical.

 

Artari5200, you have consistantly shown that you don't care about or like the Wii. Why do you start threads about it?

[Lastblade]

You know, this annoys me to no end.....

 

I've seen a few Wii's in the wild as of late, and haven't yet felt compelled to buy, I've been so annoyed with Nintendo over this.....

 

And my Gamecube is still plenty fun....

 

I play mostly cube games on my Wii, so yah, it is kinda silly to buy a Wii until Mario Galaxy (for me anyway, as I have no desire to play Corruption).

[Atari5200]

My (very basic, inexperienced, yet not totally illogical) business intuition tell me that Nintendo doesn't want to invest in an increased production capability because it would impact on the end profit made on each system sold. I imagine that Nintendo's logic is "We'd rather minimize our production costs by keeping them as they are now, and keep the same profit margin on each system sold, because it's not necessary to meet the demand of the holiday shopping season since consumers will keep buying Wiis well after Christmas anyway."

Considering how conservative a business model Nintendo has, this sounds very logical.

 

Artari5200, you have consistantly shown that you don't care about or like the Wii. Why do you start threads about it?

 

it's interesting news to share with the community and if i didn't post it, i'm sure someone else would have.

 

Pixelboy, i agree with you and Sony and Microsoft sell their units at a loss to make it back in software sales, but as i had posted before, every store i go to the shelves are full and i mean busting out full of wii software but never any wii's so are they not making money on software that they either are to greedy to not ramp up production? I find it hard to believe that they cannot afford to bump up production.

[n8littlefield]

Every store has Wii software just like every store has 360/PS3 software. It's not hard to keep up with software demand - you just press more discs. There aren't dozens of parts coming from different factories, there's really no assembly to speak of - you just shove a disc in a box and ship it. It's not that hard to understand why the shelf could be full of software and I don't see why you continue to think that because you see games on the shelf the Wii isn't selling software.

 

I understand that the litmus test of Wii software sales - your uncle - only has Wii Sports. However, all the Wii owners I know own at least 5 or 6 games - I think I'm up to 10 myself. Most of us also have spent over $100 each (at least) on virtual console titles.

 

And for the record - the Wii library has improved to the point that I no longer have a Cube library - I got rid of all the Cube games except Spiderman (my son loves it, so I couldnt' get rid of it) and Donkey Konga 1 & 2.

[MCHufnagel]

And for the record - the Wii library has improved to the point that I no longer have a Cube library - I got rid of all the Cube games except Spiderman (my son loves it, so I couldnt' get rid of it) and Donkey Konga 1 & 2.

Personally, if I had a Wii, I certainly wouldn't get rid of many Gamecube titles. I would keep my RPG's (after a year, the Wii only has Marvel Ultimate Alliance? ) and I would keep my "collection" discs. Why buy a Megaman or Sonic game off of the VC (can you even play them on another Wii?) when you can have a disc full of them (for cheap)?

[n8littlefield]

And for the record - the Wii library has improved to the point that I no longer have a Cube library - I got rid of all the Cube games except Spiderman (my son loves it, so I couldnt' get rid of it) and Donkey Konga 1 & 2.

Personally, if I had a Wii, I certainly wouldn't get rid of many Gamecube titles. I would keep my RPG's (after a year, the Wii only has Marvel Ultimate Alliance? ) and I would keep my "collection" discs. Why buy a Megaman or Sonic game off of the VC (can you even play them on another Wii?) when you can have a disc full of them (for cheap)?

I had about 20 Cube games and found that I simply never played them. The compilation games are a better deal - but I have to admit my love for having them right on the channel list with no disc required. The classic controller is really, really nice too - the dpad is 100x better than the Cube one.

 

I'm not a RPG fan though - and I can see where that's an area that the Wii is severely lacking right now.

[Atari5200]

Every store has Wii software just like every store has 360/PS3 software. It's not hard to keep up with software demand - you just press more discs. There aren't dozens of parts coming from different factories, there's really no assembly to speak of - you just shove a disc in a box and ship it. It's not that hard to understand why the shelf could be full of software and I don't see why you continue to think that because you see games on the shelf the Wii isn't selling software.

 

well when i see boxes missing and empty shelves from every other console, when it took me 3 days to find a copy of The Darkness and still not a good supply at my local wal-mart, but there's 3 full shelves of Metroid Prime 3 and it looks like not 1 has sold. It was just an observation from my local stores. you can easily go and find sold out games for every system but the Wii.

[Pixelboy]

Every store has Wii software just like every store has 360/PS3 software. It's not hard to keep up with software demand - you just press more discs. There aren't dozens of parts coming from different factories, there's really no assembly to speak of - you just shove a disc in a box and ship it. It's not that hard to understand why the shelf could be full of software and I don't see why you continue to think that because you see games on the shelf the Wii isn't selling software.

Right. Also consider the fact that Nintendo needs to keep the shelves full of games in order not to let the competition take up shelf space, especially in the major stores like Wal-Mart or Best Buy. Those stores won't let empty shelves stay empty for very long, and they'll plug the holes with 360 and PS3 software if they have to. So I'd say seing lots of Wii software on the shelves is normal, regardless of hardware sales.

 

And for the record - the Wii library has improved to the point that I no longer have a Cube library - I got rid of all the Cube games except Spiderman (my son loves it, so I couldnt' get rid of it) and Donkey Konga 1 & 2.

Personally, if I had a Wii, I certainly wouldn't get rid of many Gamecube titles. I would keep my RPG's (after a year, the Wii only has Marvel Ultimate Alliance? ) and I would keep my "collection" discs. Why buy a Megaman or Sonic game off of the VC (can you even play them on another Wii?) when you can have a disc full of them (for cheap)?

In the case of Mega Man Collection on the GC, I got rid of it because the A and B buttons had their positions swapped on the GC controller, which made the games completely unplayable (for me at least). So if Capcom fixed this problem on the VC, I'd likely buy all the Mega Man games as they come out. (Seing as Super Mario World on VC has the same problem as MMC on GC, I won't keep my hopes up...)

 

The only reason I still have my GC is to play GBC/GBA games on my TV via the Game Boy Player. Give me any kind of Wii-based alternative for playing my GBC/GBA carts on my TV, and my GC will be gone faster than Speedy Gonzales on steroids.

 

well when i see boxes missing and empty shelves from every other console, when it took me 3 days to find a copy of The Darkness and still not a good supply at my local wal-mart, but there's 3 full shelves of Metroid Prime 3 and it looks like not 1 has sold. It was just an observation from my local stores. you can easily go and find sold out games for every system but the Wii.

Really? I know two Wal-Marts in my area that are currently out of MP3. But I'm sure they'll get more soon, if they haven't already.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Well..around where I live the situation is pretty much the same everywhere. For the longest time, the Wii couldn't be found at most places. In addition most stores seem to have a few copies of just about every title, except for Wii Play and a few others I wasn't interested in. Oh...elebits isn't easy to find anymore locally anymore, so I'm glad I jumped and got that when I did.

 

Now...the situation for the most part was the same everywhere, most of the Wii games were available but the Wii themselves were not. Then, about a month ago, this started to change. Now most stores have about 2 or 3 Wiis available for sale, and seem to have plenty of games to go with them. And, from what I can see, the same is to be said of the 360 and PS3 games as well. In fact, even when the PS3 was sold out for a time, there was still quite a few copies of the games that were available still available.

 

Heck, if I really wanted, I could easily go and pick up numerous copies of Halo3 LE here in just about any Tulsa area Circuit City if I wanted or needed. In fact, most EB/GS and even BestBuys still have a few Legendary Halo 3 kits left if you're willing to plunk down the mula.

 

I guess my point is that with the exception of a few titles for all the systems, I can pretty much get just about any game for any platform I might want. And currently if I needed a Wii I could likely find one after visiting a few stores looking. It seems to me that the games to Wii ratio is higher in favor of there being more games available. I've no doubt most of those who bought the Wii did so strictly for Wii sports. But I myself now own 12 Wii games and hope to add Dewy's Adventure and a few others in the coming months to that collection. I also know that I've spent more like $200 on VC games on my Wii.

 

Back to the topic at hand. I've no doubt that Nintendo could increase their production if they really wanted. But they don't want to get stuck with consoles that won't sell sitting around once all the initial people have bought the Wii. In addition, I'm glad Nintendo doesn't hire temp help to compensate for the demand so that they then have to lay them off come January. I also believe that Nintendo is granking out as many Wiis as there are 360s or PS3s that can be made. But you see more of them, because people aren't buying them up as they are the Wii. Sure the 360 is nearly even with the Wii in sales, but it took it nearly 2 years to do this vs. the Wii's initial 9 - 10 months. But eventually the Wii's won't be flying off the shelves and we will all forget about this conspiracy crap that Nintendo purposely limits production of the Wii.

[n8littlefield]

Every store has Wii software just like every store has 360/PS3 software. It's not hard to keep up with software demand - you just press more discs. There aren't dozens of parts coming from different factories, there's really no assembly to speak of - you just shove a disc in a box and ship it. It's not that hard to understand why the shelf could be full of software and I don't see why you continue to think that because you see games on the shelf the Wii isn't selling software.

 

well when i see boxes missing and empty shelves from every other console, when it took me 3 days to find a copy of The Darkness and still not a good supply at my local wal-mart, but there's 3 full shelves of Metroid Prime 3 and it looks like not 1 has sold. It was just an observation from my local stores. you can easily go and find sold out games for every system but the Wii.

That might be because they reordered Metroid but not the Darkness. The only month the Darkness showed up on the NPD charts was July when it sold 140k copies for the 360. Since then, it has not sold enough to chart. Metroid Corruption was on the chart in August, having only been out a few days, and still sold about 240k. So - my observation would be it was received lukewarmly and stores didn't bother replenishing stock.

[phaxda]

This is interesting because I just found my first Wii at a Circuit City yesterday. I bought it immediately; I've been waiting for a long time for one. The staff said that the demand was still super high--they come in and are sold the same day. The prices on craigslist have dropped a little, but are still above retail.

 

If I were Nintendo, I would see no reason to change the strategy--it's not as if the current course is not working. There's still pent-up demand, and the likelihood of someone paying much more for another system--one that has very little in common with the Wii--is slim.

[Artlover]

Isn't this consistent with Nintendo's past history? I think it's their way at getting back at us for loosing in WWII. Create stock shortages so parents go out and kill each other during the holidays. How many people died for a NES anyways....

[Atari5200]

i don't remember a supply problem like this with any system in the past, that I can remember anyway. But i'm probably wrong. Even the PS2 i remember being pretty readily available in my area, maybe some places sold out, but even then, it's a year later and do you want to know how many Wii's i've seen in the wild? 1.

[bones]

I'm confused, shouldn't this be in the Wii sub-forum?

[moycon]

I'm confused, shouldn't this be in the Wii sub-forum?

 

I dont think you're allowed to post comments in the Wii sub-forum that contain anything that might be percieved as negative.

[godslabrat]

Artari5200, you have consistantly shown that you don't care about or like the Wii. Why do you start threads about it?

 

it's interesting news to share with the community and if i didn't post it, i'm sure someone else would have.

 

 

Atari5200, I have to admit I find this puzzling as well. Why post so much about a system you have mostly negative feelings for, especially when there are a sizable number of fans willing to post about the Wii. If you're so certain this news would have been posted, why did you feel compelled to do so yourself? It does kind of paint the picture that you're reveling in any failure Nintendo might have. This may not be your intent, but coupled with your signature, please understand that's how people might see it. (Really, why do I care that some floozy didn't take a leak when nature called?)

 

I mean, just to try and relate, I don't have much loveloss for the PS3 and I admit to being amused at how Sony seems to be dropping the ball a lot this generation... but I don't want to be a pill to the diehard Sony fans who frequent the PS3 forum. I only read and post in there when I have something worthwhile to say... which as you can see, isn't often. And I think that's okay.

 

If you dwell so much on a system you don't like, it seems you must be trying to aggrivate others, or possibly yourself in some kind of masochistic way. Why? I'm not trying to be confrontational, just asking.

[Zwackery]

The GameStop in my area usually sells what they have within 24 hours of getting a shipment, the Wal-Mart typically has a few on the shelves at any time, and the local Meijer has at least a dozen or so in stock fairly constantly now.

[Jess Ragan]

I just want to say, Nate, that you've got the most brilliant parody of a signature AS a signature ever.