As the only avid video game playing adult in my family, I inherited the responsibility and honor to supply the children in our family with any and nearly all video game information and hardware. There are two kids that I buy games and systems for. As most of you know all too well, this is an expensive hobby. Imagine that times three. I am a working adult with a mortgage and heavy bills but I make do.
Knowing Nintendo's now regular habit of drumming up free advertising with the media by its conveniently timed lack of supply, I knew it would be a challenge to obtain a system this generation.
Nintendo announced early that manufacturing of the system was well under way during summer last year. That gave them plenty of time to make more than enough systems. I had a bad experience with GameStop's reservations so I thought I would just wait in line.
The night before the Wii was released however we had a party to go to. We left early to go wait in line and there were already people there. For those that read my blog you know the details. I had two other people available originally to go wait in line with me. I had to buy three systems. That would be one for me and two for my Godson's.
Only two of us were available to go at 3 a.m. to get in line and we walked away with only two. I searched far and wide for the following months but to no avail. I would call all the different retailers and would not get any satisfactory answer let alone a courteous telephone experience. The retailers were fed up, and rightly so, with all the annoying requests.
So I listened to all the podcasts, read all the speculations. Everyone and their Podcast Producer were claiming March was when the Wii's would be easily found. I kept making excuses to my Godson and even contemplated giving up my own Wii to satisfy his wish. I didn't want to give him a used one and refused to get one without a warrantee. He is young and his Wii-Mote WILL break.
It is extremely popular to slam "analysts" for their educated guesses as to when products will benefit from sales and which products will come out on top. Nearly every podcast that I listen to, The HotSpot not excluded, would repeatedly joke about the education and intelligence that it would take to become an industry analyst yet they also made the same mistake.
We all assumed that the Wii's would be around but the only ones that would ever truly know are Nintendo themselves. Why must we continue to guess and make such statements? Only to keep the public calm and happy by given them a solid answer? If Nintendo won't concern itself with keeping the consumer happy why should any of the media outlets?
Let the investors trust their "Analysts" but don't infest our "only audio source's" with that guesstimation habit.
Comments
that being said though i'm also a bit interested as to how long Nintendo can keep this up. I mean, the last time i heard of any Wii's even getting shipped was the "second shipment" that went out in January. Sure, Microsoft also pulled this a bit, and Sony did with the PS2 (although their excuses and slipups sounded more realistic....although that can hint to incompetence which can be worse). I guess the problem is that the Wii being completely absent from shelves is not as indicative to its success as people beleive. Everything else seems to be more than well stocked (when a game keeps selling out, then you know you got something special on your hands).
I really wonder if Nintendo will start up their Wii productions lines again soon, since the fact that i havent even heard of a wii being sold in the past many months feels like they have basically not made any (while that may not be true, as i said, it's what it feels like).
As for the DS i not only have seen plenty stocked in stores, but i dont recall there being any major shortages, those Nintendo looked like they were making them as fast as they could sell them. They definetly took their pretty time releasing the darn thing, i had been waiting for it ever since i got scammed into buying an original GBA thinking there would never be a backlight made, so having to wait since it was announced in november all the way to march with little sense in delaying it so long drove me a bit nuts.
I sincerely hope that this lack of supply isn't fabricated.
This has gotten way out of hand though, but the problem isn't the shortage, of which, if there is one, it is relatively small. It's the fact that sooooo many people are trying to get a hold of one.
Wootex