Reggie: There’s No Wii Supply Conspiracy
By Chris on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 7:33 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games Industry, Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo
Nintendo has often been criticized for its inability to meet demand for the Wii; accusations that Nintendo was intentionally controlling the supply of Wii shipments to ensure that it remains a persistently sold out item aren’t uncommon. But according to Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime has denied this, stating that it would be counterintuitive to do such a thing.
“At this point we are literally trying to catch up with demand,” said Fils-Aime.
“There is no secret plan to store Wiis in a warehouse to spur demand. The company, after all, is trying to reach out to women and 40 and 50-year olds who aren’t avid gamers.
“They aren’t going to sleep outside of a store overnight or visit a retailer five or six times. It is literally a missed opportunity.”
Perhaps, but Nintendo isn’t losing sales to those women and older folks since they aren’t likely to be camping out to get the system; they’ll simply snatch one up when they see one on store shelves.
Reggie might be telling us the truth, but it’s hard to completely shake away lingering doubts when reports like this surface.
News.com via GamesIndustry.biz
I have a source at GameStop and Best Buy who both tell me that they are instructed to hold back the amount of Wiis going on the shelf at one time. I do not think Nintendo is the one behind this.. it’s definitely the retailers. The fact that you rarely ever see one on the shelf keeps it as a high priority item. It’s interesting that supply can’t keep up after a year.. something is definitely going on.
It’s not just the retailers. I work at a Best Buy, and we honestly rarely see Nintendo Wiis. Either we get them in on our truck days and sell them IMMEDIATELY, or we get them in and reserve them for our Sunday Ads (and no we don’t do it because we feel like it, it’s the law). That’s not to say some cynical ***hole manager at a Best Buy or wherever won’t try to take advantage of customer desperation and sell one at a time (to try to get them to add more items to the systems, considering retailers don’t make ANYTHING on the system alone). So you’re wrong, it’s not retailers. They’d have to get shipments from Nintendo in the first place to even contemplate being sneaky about it. None of our stores in the state sure as hell ever see them.