42 Comments Add your own

• 1. David Johnson  |  August 10th, 2007 at 7:56 am

  oooh, where are our marketing and pr buddies when you need them? managing supply and issuing just enough product to the market to maintain exclusivity is soooo brilliant. Wii has held on to the uber cool cache for a really long time, hard to do in this market.

  between the must have DS handheld and the impossible to find Wii, nintendo is truly the blue chip gaming company. sure there are a lot of great products in the space, but Nintendo is just plain beating the hell out of everything. i want to see more written on their marketing strategy — not the usual media buying and ad campaign stuff, but the down-and-dirty supply chain management, pricing, distribution, and word-of-mouth stuff that is the bedrock of really good marketing. there is a lot we can learn there.

• 2. David Johnson  |  August 10th, 2007 at 8:00 am

  also, i’m curious saf, have you already got another current console in the house? wii and xbox are so different that it seems like instead of choosing one or the other, serious gamers have to have both. with the insane price point, it looks like ps3 is the one that is getting left out in the cold on that. i’m not seeing any research to the effect though.

• 3. JoeMo  |  August 10th, 2007 at 8:09 am

  I see them in now and again in my area; maybe they aren’t as popular here as in other places. If I see one in stock maybe i’ll pick it up and sell it to ya.

• 4. Joe  |  August 10th, 2007 at 8:25 am

  My local Toys R Us says they still receive calls every morning from people desperate to find a Wii, and they usually receive a shipment at the beginning of the month. The number they get is tied to how many Wii games/accessories they sell. Their most recent shipment was August 3 or 4 and they only received 12 of them. It wasn’t advertised, obviously, so the early morning callers snapped them up.

  It really is astonishing, even more so when you consider how the gaming press spent the last ten years dumping on Nintendo at every opportunity.

  Full disclosure: I have a Wii (launch day!) and a PS3.

• 5. Plankmeister  |  August 10th, 2007 at 8:47 am

  That’s funny, because I’m selling mine. In fact, I just put a “for sale” sign on our station’s bulletin board today!

• 6. Narrowcaster  |  August 10th, 2007 at 8:53 am

  The only place that I found that had them in stock on a somewhat regular basis was Wal-Mart. I bought my son one back in March and I had been looking for one since Christmas.

• 7. Jake  |  August 10th, 2007 at 9:48 am

  When are companies going to realize that intentionally not meeting the consumer’s demand is NOT good for business? PS3, Wii, etc…it’s stupid. We want to give you money…so give us the opportunity! Companies should mimic apple’s iphone. A great product with an insane amount of product available on opening day and every day since. If you wanted and iPhone or have ever wanted one, you have had the opportunity to get one since it first came out. Stop fu**king with us companies. We want to give you money.

• 8. Drew Robertson  |  August 10th, 2007 at 9:48 am

  Next time you are in NYC stop by the Nintendo store at Rock Center. Lots there last time I looked.

• 9. Dave  |  August 10th, 2007 at 9:59 am

  So is the shortage truly fake or was Nintendo just not ready for success?

  Up until launch, nobody predicted the Wii was going to be this big except for the Nintendo die-hard fans.

• 10. Safran  |  August 10th, 2007 at 10:07 am

  David: We have both the XBox and the XBox 360. (And a PS from back in the day!)

  Drew: I may do just that, although it does seem like an awful lot of effort to go 250 miles to purchase a product. I agree with Jake that it should be in a company’s best interest to keep up with consumer demand. Not making them available does not make me want one more - it makes me irritated. Not a good business model.

  Dave: I can understand not being ready for this kind of success at the beginning. But the Wii launched in November. They’ve had nine months to catch up. They will lose out on Christmas sales. This should get marketing people fired, not rewarded.

• 11. Tony  |  August 10th, 2007 at 10:21 am

  I walk in and out of my local wal mart a few times a week and there are always Wiis in the case. I guess I should go into business and charge a small finders fee for my time and fuel costs.

• 12. Charles  |  August 10th, 2007 at 10:57 am

  From what I’ve read, this isn’t a fake shortage like Sony does, it’s just that demand far exceeds demand.

• 13. MSM  |  August 10th, 2007 at 11:05 am

  Demand exceeds Demand? That’s communism, isn’t it?

• 14. David Johnson  |  August 10th, 2007 at 11:14 am

  not the best article, but the quickest discovery by googling got me this:
  In Short Supply: 5 ways to use scarcity and exclusivity to fuel sales and boost your bottom line

  http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2004/june/70948.html

  nintendo is posting killer profits, managing production costs and keeping sales high. sony and microsoft are both taking baths on the production costs of ps and xbox. the real money for them is in licensing the platform to developers.

• 15. Chris  |  August 10th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

  I got mine a few months ago at a Toys R Us, but a store at a mall near me had a stack of at least 15 in their storefront recently.

• 16. Anonymous  |  August 10th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

  What’s funny is how Microsoft has taken advantage of the shortages of the other two systems. I went into a Best Buy not long ago and there was a mountain — a MOUNTAIN — of Xbox 360 systems on display. It looked like the big stacks of bottled water or soft drink 12 packs that they pile up at the end of the aisle in the grocery store.

• 17. Jeremiah  |  August 10th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

  That’s odd - I’ve been wanting a Wii, too, but my problem is I see them everywhere…but I’m broke when I do.

• 18. Jeff V  |  August 10th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

  Any Target, Best Buy, Walmart, KMart, GameStop I walk into here in the Detroit area always has a few. My son got his at launch, luckily enough, with NO pre-order (which is a farce all itself and perhaps the subject of another rant).

  I’m guessing the 360s were in plentiful demand because of a) the hardware issues and the 3 Red Rings of Death are keeping buyers away; b) the hard core gamers already have them and are waiting for the next upgrade; or c) they just recently had or will have a price drop that they hope will bring up sales again.

• 19. gunner  |  August 10th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

  Wait until September when Halo 3 launches. You’ll see a huge surge in XBOX 360 sales.

• 20. The Tony  |  August 10th, 2007 at 1:42 pm

  Hopefully a bunch of kids will start asking mom for Halo when it launches, so that I can finally FIND a damn Wii in the store without having to resort to camping outside at Toys R Us at 4AM or pushing fat ladies out of the way when electronics stores open every morning.

  They’re hard to find because they’re fun and mainstream gaming is big right now. Halo players are freaky basement dwellers of gaming now that the Wii is upon us.

• 21. Emi  |  August 10th, 2007 at 1:47 pm

  I have one for my home and one for my office. And I live in Romania. Hihi! I think the Wii console has some built in code that says: if (potential buyer == Steve Safran) { Wii out of stock }

• 22. Trevor  |  August 10th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

  I work at a local brick an mortar retailer and if you check the system every once an a while as we do, there can be 1,000 to even 15,000 wii’s in the regional wearhouse. However their sale is planned in advance once a certin stock is reached. The weekly circular add will advertise the Wii’s sale, the store should and always does have the minuim number in stock by that sunday morning for immediate sale. The stock however in the wharehouse after that sunday is almost always 0… So basically check your weekely circulars if you see a wii in an add (target, best buy, circuit city…) then get to that store about an hour before they open and you basically own one…

• 23. Mark  |  August 10th, 2007 at 3:21 pm

  Got one last weekend at Best Buy in Cherry Hill NJ. They were adverstising at least 12 in their store. It opened at 11 and my son and I got there at 10:20am. Employee gave us the 23rd certificate to get one. They had a total of 27 at the store. We lucked out and it is a great system.

• 24. discreet_chaos  |  August 10th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

  I’ve said before that I don’t play video games, but because this rant has been parked at the top of the page for a while, I clicked over to Walmart[dot]com. There, I found that the plain old console and the lesser priced bundles are both listed as out of stock online, but the more expensive bundle (2x the price of the console) shows as being available. So, maybe the whole shortage is part of a marketing scheme and part of that equation is designed to force people to buy all the peripherals.

• 25. Anonymous  |  August 10th, 2007 at 8:21 pm

  I think your blog is broken. The new posts aren’t showing up.

• 26. ok4realz  |  August 11th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

  Cache and marketing genius? Wii-diculous!!! No disrespect, but the nuances of marketing finesse are hard to appreciate when you are one of the manipulated masses. All that this scarcity is effectively doing is irritating consumers and legitimizing the price-gouging of big-box bundlers and internet scalpers. Think of all the peripherals and games the have-nots would have bought by now!! Instead of buying their first console this holiday season, they would be buying their second for the household and more as gifts at the original MSRP.

• 27. Matthew  |  August 13th, 2007 at 5:19 am

  I walked into a GameStop store a few days ago looking for Command & Conquer 3 (PC) and a colleague of mine asked them if they had any Wiis, and they said they had just gotten a shipment in 10 minutes prior. Knowing their relative rarity and that I’d eventually need to get one for my girlfriend, I dropped the cash for one right then and there. Fun to play it after hearing so much about it.

• 28. David Johnson  |  August 13th, 2007 at 7:41 am

  “Wii-diculous” — i love that.

• 29. Nicholas  |  August 13th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

  Funny enough, my girlfriend doesn’t want one, but I do. She loves the Gamecube, though.. so I don’t quite get it. Anyhow, I cannot for the life of me find a Wii to purchase. It’s absolutely ridiculous that Nintendo hasn’t figured out supply problems in the past five years…

• 30. Kyle  |  August 16th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

  CAll Toys R us find out when they arrive. Gp at about 5 a.m. and get in line ……it really is quite easy

• 31. Mark Mascolino  |  August 17th, 2007 at 10:33 am

  Cincinnati here. I always check when I am in Target, Toys R Us etc. and they are never is stock.

• 32. Sam  |  August 23rd, 2007 at 9:53 am

  After trying to find that mythical console for almost a year now, part of me wants to give up and another part of me only wants it more… Damn you wii.

• 33. Alicia  |  September 25th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

  I got a new one I’ve been meaning to sell. My boyfriend bought one and I had won one. Too late to return the bought one for cash (would only get credit) so I was planning to sell but haven’t gotten around to it. Looking at ebay i see what i can get. Make an offer. Its new in the box from best buy., just the console and 5 wii sport games. Retail is $250. I am willing to sacrifice a bit in the price i would get to not have to set it up through ebay but don’t take advantage as you don’t have to outbid anyone or look around anymore…

• 34. Casey  |  October 17th, 2007 at 12:10 am

  I can only find the Wii in stock when I don’t have the money to spend on one. But when I do have the money, like today, I can’t find one in my entire town. At my last stop a worker told me that they had sold the last Wii about 15 minutes before I asked about one. I just wish one of the stores would tell me what day the get shipments for them, I would be glad to fork over the money.

• 35. stephen  |  October 20th, 2007 at 8:28 am

  dam you Nintendo!

  Thats all i have to say……..

  DAM YOU !!!!!!!

• 36. Tony  |  October 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am

  Don’t you mean Damn Nintendo? Maybe you should spend less time on computer games and more time learning to spell.

  Long live Nintendo and the Wii.

• 37. Jasmin  |  October 20th, 2007 at 11:10 am

  Yeh! you should learn to read and write dumbass.

• 38. Lance  |  October 20th, 2007 at 11:11 am

  Even i can spell better than that and I’m a dog.

• 39. mia  |  October 20th, 2007 at 11:22 am

  Yeah, dumbass! your just jealous cos my dad is hairyer than your dog……. count the mistakes ! you have so much time on your hands, why dont you use it to wrap that wii up and walk to the post office so you can send it to my dad.

• 40. Amy  |  October 26th, 2007 at 9:10 pm

  Has anyone ever realized that some stores like GameStop will proudly display tons of Wii boxes… that are empty. I’m not talking about a poster advertising that they sell Wii’s, I see a wall of the exact boxes Wii’s come in. However, they’re all empty. I asked a clerk why they stock their floor with empty boxes and he said that they have to otherwise Ninetendo fines them. Hm…

• 41. Brad  |  October 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

  A fellow I work with was at Best Buy last week and they had paper vouchers on display instead of the boxed consoles themselves — perhaps due to limited space? When he went to the register he jokingly asked if he was buying the last one. The cashier said, “oh no we’ve got 19 more in the back.” (She had to go get one since, as I said, he had a voucher.) The next day, after talking his wife into it, he went back and bought 6 more Wii’s, 6 WiiPlay, and 6 Nunchucks. By that time, before his purchase, he was told there were only 12 left in stock. He said his intention is to wait until Christmas for the demand to go up and sell them on eBay.

  THAT is the kind of crap we consumers have to deal with. Oh well. At least I have mine.

• 42. TW  |  June 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am

  They are not too hard to find if you know how. I finally got one yesterday for $250(the actual price of the Wii) without having to bend over for someone on ebay or craigslist.

  Every EBGames & Gamestop store gets some in stock a random day each week, Monday-Friday, between 11AM-Noon. I am not affiliated with either of these stores, they just happen to be the only ones that I know of that have a somewhat regular supply of these consoles. Call one of the stores, they’ll even tell you that this is the time/days that they get Wii deliveries. Get the number to the closest 10 stores near you (google their website, it has a store locator that will show you all the nearest stores w/ phone #’s & addresses… depending on where you live, most will be within 15 miles of you), then call each one starting at 11:30AM, until you find one that has it in stock. One of these stores should have it in stock the 1st day (if you call 10 stores, on average, 2 of those would get Wii’s in stock that day). If by chance, none of those stores have any in stock, just call the next day (if they still don’t have any in stock, do yourself a favor & never go to vegas!!). When you find one in stock, the store will hold it for up to 20 minutes for you.

  Enjoy your Wii & the extra $$ you didn’t shell out to feed vultures.

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