Nintendo's Harrison denies Wii hoarding accusation

by JC Fletcher { Mar 28th 2007 at 2:41PM }

George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing, apparently didn't appreciate the accusation from Gamestop COO Dan DeMatteo that Nintendo was strategically waiting until the start of the new fiscal year to ship out more Wiis. He countered with something that seems a lot less corporate cloak-and-dagger, and a lot more common sense: Nintendo is, in fact, selling a whole lot of Wiis in three regions, and that is why there's a perceived shortage.

Harrison went on to speculate that DeMatteo's comments were an attempt to get some of the Wii supply diverted to Gamestop. You'd think he would have learned a lesson about such speculating from the very thing he's responding to, but perhaps we're expecting too much.

[Via Game|Life]

Tags: Gamestop, George Harrison, GeorgeHarrison, hoard, Nintendo, rumo, sales, supply, Wii

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

hvnlysoldr @ Mar 28th 2007 3:21PM

Common sense isn't common. I am amazed how smart and dumb people can be at the same time. I totally agree with Harrison. They're selling millions in Japan, America, and Europe. They have to ship to all those countries. Japan still cannot be sated for its DS Lite shortages. People are still lining up before the store opens in hopes of the next shipment. And this is four and a half months after launch. In the traditional slump post holiday period.

Wealthy Industrialite @ Mar 28th 2007 4:00PM

I went to a Wal-mart this afternoon and bought WiiPlay. The Video Games guy told me they got nine consoles yesterday, all gone within minutes.

homesickalien @ Mar 28th 2007 4:53PM

I think the truth of the situation is that Nintendo is not holding back Wii production, they're just not making a huge effort to supply the massive demand still out there. On the other hand, it is VERY likely that Nintendo would be holding back their Virtual Console games for April 1st. The VC is a whole farm of cash cows waiting to be milked that would massively boost their 2007 profit margin if they played it right. I really hope come April 1st that the VC floodgates open and we start seeing 5-10 new games a week.

randomguy132 @ Mar 28th 2007 5:36PM

This makes more sense.

mario @ Mar 28th 2007 7:35PM

I am a HUGE Nintendo fan and have bought 3 Wii's since for myself and family since launch.

However, I am also a CPA and work for one of the largest accounting firms in the world. And I have to admit, that it is definitely plausible that Nintendo is holding back supply. In fact, Nintendo executives probably have a huge fiscal incentive to do this! Counterintuitive? Not at all. In fact, a large number of high-profile accounting failures in the last 5 years have resulted from the use of this type of "cookie jar" accounting or "smoothing of earnings"

It works like this: Executive compensation bonuses are usually tied to the performance of the company. Once a certain predetermined threshold is exceeded, the bonuses kick-in. We all know that Nintendo has had a phenomenal year and by any measurement of performance, it is safe to assume that executives have already met all of their goals triggering their bonus payouts. Nintendo's fiscal year end is 3/31. Therefore, it makes no sense for Nintendo to push out more wii's before this date, since all goals have been already exceeded. It makes more sense for Nintendo to hold back this supply and open the floodgates starting the NEW fiscal year. This puts nintendo in a better position to hit those thresholds for executive bonuses in the next year. That's "cookie jar" accounting 101.