Gamertell

The Wii is once again going to be one of the scarcest gifts this holiday season. The CEO of GameStop, Dan DeMatteo confirmed in an interview with GameDaily BIZ that Nintendo’s Wii output still isn’t high enough to satisfy consumers. Even though Nintendo’s Wii production has been raised by 20%, and as many as 300,000 Wiis could be sold each month, there will still be many broken hearts when the holidays come.

Yahoo! Video Games offers three valuable suggestings to Wii shoppers this season. The first is to check eBay or Craigslist, and be willing to either accept a used system or pay a premium price. The second suggestion is to be at the stores when they open and hope for the best. The final suggestion is to use a tracking website like Wiitracker to try and find out which stores are going to have Wiis…

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The Wii shortage continues, but still the gamers don’t seem to be frustrated enough to boycott the console. They are currently buying every single Wii that they can get a hold of, and this Wii-lust probably contributed heavily in online retailer Amazon’s holiday windfall. Amazon has recognized the 2007 holiday season as the most profitable in its history. It acknowledged the Wii’s role in making this holiday season its best in terms of sales.

Amazon noted that it sold 17 Wiis per second when they were in stock. The significance of this figure is best realized when one calculates the number of Wiis sold in a single day using this rate (presuming that they were available). The number comes out to be roughly 1.4 million Wii sold everyday (it is obviously hypothetical). This also drives home the point that Nintendo might have lost out due to their shortage over the holidays by missing out on an even greater sales opportunity. As for game titles, the best-selling titles at Amazon, during the holiday season, were Super Mario Galaxy and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Read [Next-Gen]

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Nintendo is livid with retailers selling unsanctioned Wii bundles, which is a retailer gambit to take unfair advantage of the Wii shortage to boost their own profits. But it seems Nintendo can save its anger for other unethical trade practices, one of which has been uncovered by technology website Ars Technica. According to a report on the website, Slacker stores - retail chain stores based in Illinois/Missouri – are selling their Wii stock on EBay for huge profits.

An unidentified Slacker employee told Ars Technica that the stores were receiving regular Wii supplies but all of the Wii’s were being sold on EBay for a “buy it now” price of $399.99. He also made the startling revelation that none of the Wiis are being sold through the stores and only one Wii has been sold offline in the last year. He pegged the number of Wiis in their inventory at 20 – none of which will grace the Slacker store shelves.

Slackers has issued a public letter to its customers and dismissed Ars Technica’s allegations. In the letter, Kurt Jellinek, president of Slackers CDs and Games, defended the small retail chain and gave account of the number of Wii’s it had brought from distributors this holiday season. He admitted that the company had sold around 5 of its 44 Wiis on EBay.

If the company’s clarifiation is to be taken at its word, then the selling of Wiis online shouldn’t bother anyone, as it does not directly receive a stockpile of the consoles from Nintendo but purchases them from the market.

Read [Ars Technica] via [Gizmodo]

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The year 2007 began with a Wii-drought and even towards the end of the year, the videogame world is abuzz with talk of the perpetual Wii shortage and its impact. Analysts and well-read gamers are chipping in with their opinions on how the shortage can hurt Nintendo. However, there is another issue with the Wii that might need Nintendo’s attention, and that is retailers inventing their own Wii bundles. 

Many retailers are bundling the Wii console with games and accessories of their choice, which means that the buyer is forced to shell out more money even if he doesn’t desire the accompanying games or accessories. In this manner, some retailers are taking undue advantage of the gamers’ desperation when it comes to buying a Wii. Apparently, Nintendo isn’t too appreciative of such a practice.

Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, told Reuters that Nintendo had informed the retailers that it wasn’t a fan of these Wii bundles. According to him, these bundles are robbing the Wii of its price advantage. Although Nintendo might not like it, there is little it can do to prevent the retailers from selling these Wii bundles.

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Initially Nintendo could afford to take the Wii shortage lightly, maybe even with some pride, but now things have changed. Nintendo has constantly come up with assurances that it is trying hard to meet demand. However, many analysts believe that these assurances might not work anymore and gamers might flock to buy other consoles. They even expect Nintendo to loose out on roughly $1 billion worth of Wii sales this holiday season.

Failure to meet demand means that Nintendo is missing out on an opportunity of far greater sales than it is currently able to manage.James Din, senior analyst at the MDB Capital Group,  told New York Times that the shortage might be depriving Nintendo of double the sales that it can manage righ now. He estimates that Nintendo might miss out on $1 billion of sales this holiday season. While arriving at that figure, he did not take into account the increased sale of first-party software, if Nintendo was to meet demand.

There has been an adverse effect of Nintendo’s failure to meet Wii demand on its stocks, which have dropped by 8% since November. Nintendo is playing into the hands of its rivals and Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer knows that. He took a dig at Nintendo, earlier this week, when he said that he was happy that Wii seemed to be running out of hardware.

Read [New York Times]

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A recent BBC news article warns of serious holiday Wii shortages – bad news for all the hopeful gamers, grannies, and soccer moms who have Nintendo’s popular console on their wish list this season. Nintendo has made a push to keep up with the demand, raising its yearly shipment of consoles from 14 million units to 17.5 million, but the company is still warning consumers that there won’t be enough supply to meet the demand.

The big N chalks it up to the constant, year-round demand for the Wii, which has been sold out consistently since its warm launch reception one year ago. Of course, conspiracy theories have flown ever since claiming that Nintendo has been intentionally holding out to create artificial demand, but that hardly seems logical when there’s plenty of real-life demand lining up at local stores every time a shipment arrives.

In fact, the demand has gotten so out of hand that price-hikes and overpriced bundle deals are becoming the norm (especially for smaller retailers).

Lets just hope the Wii-madness doesn’t get to the levels of the infamous Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996. I’d hate to see someone get stabled over the ability to play Super Mario Galaxy, no matter how good the game may be.

Read [BBC News]

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