Gamestop: Wii shortages aren't going away
by David Hinkle 
{ Mar 18th 2008 at 6:00PM }
Seeing as how the console released in November of 2006, you can probably understand why we're frustrated in having to report on the inability to freely and easily locate our desire out in the world beyond tubes. We want everyone to be able to enjoy the console, so why can't Nintendo churn out enough? Why has it taken them this long to satisfy demand and why has demand been at record highs throughout the console's short lifespan? Gamestop might know, as they recently stated in a report that they expect console shortages to last for another 6 months. We're betting that the retailer's forecast is fairly conservative, as it's easy to imagine another 6 months of early mornings trying to hunt one down. The console has been hard to find since its launch, so another 6 months doesn't seem like much of a stretch to us, at all.
This is just the expectations of Gamestop, though, so should Nintendo emerge from the dark mist like some knight in shining armor, we would most definitely take our own foot and place it within our own mouth. But seeing as how Nintendo hasn't figured out how to satisfy demand issues yet, we're going to have to assume it'll take a while to get healthy Wii stock on shelves.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Donald @ Mar 18th 2008 6:21PM
I can attest to this. My roommate found a Wii in a Gamestop in Maine (when I live in Eastern Canada) on Friday, and in the words of the clerk he should've bought a lottery ticket to use the luck on.
Tristan @ Mar 18th 2008 6:47PM
I continue to hope that those lacking a wii are able to find them, a hardy shopper will browse amazon daily and hope they sell one.
Dopple Boppler @ Mar 18th 2008 6:50PM
These stories make me glad I sat outside Wal-Mart for 13 hours back at launch~
Croove55 @ Mar 18th 2008 7:10PM
I sat outside a target for fourteen hours. I wish the walmart line hadn't been full, because they got to get their systems at midnight. I was out there from 5 p.m. till 7 in the morning waiting for them to pass out reservation tickets. IT WAS COLD AND WINDY.
TheDave @ Mar 18th 2008 7:18PM
Getting to the Target/Toys R Us at 5am on release day was about the best thing I ever did!
The Target line was 100+ people!
Right next door was the Toys R Us line, 1 person. Which made me #2!
Of course TRU didn't open until 10am (while Target opened at 8am). So I had to sit there for a couple extra hours... Miniscule price to pay for having a Wii on release day :)
MidnightScott @ Mar 18th 2008 7:24PM
Man people need to wake up and smell the coffee. There's no shortage, Nintendo is just not sending out many Wii's because they want the momentum to keep going...in other words they are "creating" a shortage to keep their sells of the Wii going. If you go on Craigslist you'll see a ton of Wii's on there...meaning people are just buying them to try and make a profit. :S
vidGuy @ Mar 18th 2008 9:57PM
By definition, when demand exceeds supply there is a shortage.
macserv @ Mar 20th 2008 3:47PM
Nintendo is churning out FAR more Wii units than Sony is for the PS3, or Microsoft for the 360, and demand is STILL outpacing supply.
Nintendo is not going to invest in new manufacturing facilities; to do so would be foolish. This demand will ease up eventually, and in the meantime, the shortages maintain interest. They're doing exactly what they should do in this situation, since nobody's desire to own a Wii seems to be lessened by the relative difficulty in obtaining one.
manaman @ Mar 18th 2008 7:32PM
Oh man,
Yeah, I was in Best Buy the other day and this guy was telling me that the Wii might appear at their store over the weekend and that I should check the sale ads. Unfortunately, the Wii just isn't in my budget at the moment. I was really sad. :(
So maybe one day soon,
manaman
NinKenDo @ Mar 18th 2008 8:13PM
@Midnight Scott
So where so you get your info that Nintendo is "creating" the shortage? They simply sell them as fast as they make them, and working at Best Buy I see them sell out every week and it doesn't matter if we get 15 or 150 of them, they are gone within hours. For comparison the Xbox 360 has also seen shortages despite not selling nearly as many units as the Wii so please stop with the conspiracy theories.
Also, Gamestop is clearing taking a blind stab at that 6 month figure because Nintendo has been upping production as I have seen many more units coming in for sale. The fact is that the demand for the Wii is immense, and it's really hard to gage to what extent this phenomenon reaches, because it literally seams like everyone and their grandma wants one.
With Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit releasing in the next 2 months and the promise of much more in the 2nd half of '08 I foresee demand only becoming stronger throughout this year and beyond.
Spencer @ Mar 18th 2008 8:46PM
Nintendo is "creating a shortage" huh? Like Sony tried to do at release with it's launching with only 6 figures of consoles available for the entire world? That worked out well...
Nintendo is making a HUGE profit (relatively speaking) on every console sold, too, which makes it all the more less likely they're trying to build up hype around their systems and games to get them to the profit tipping point of selling games by artificially creating demand... It'd be bad business.
vidGuy @ Mar 18th 2008 9:56PM
Must we explain this again? Nintendo is not creating a shortage but rather refusing to invest in new production lines to increase their capacity. This is the smart business move considering the cost of investment and the fact that demand will eventually subside. If Nintendo gets more production lines to produce more consoles, they will likely end up losing money on the deal.
Similarly, Nintendo is making a profit on each console sold. Restricting supply only loses them potential revenue because Nintendo does not see any of the money made in the secondary market (Ebay, Craigslist, etc). If Nintendo were restricting supply, their shareholders would have to be mighty pissed. Considering the fact that Nintendo is producing and selling more consoles each month than its competitors, they are very unlikely to be voluntarily restricting supply.
Lastly, consider the possible business move that would be the most profitable for Nintendo: raise the Wii's MSRP until demand is balanced with supply. In this case, Nintendo would be maximizing profit while satisfying demand. Of course, raising the MSRP of a $250 console to, say, $450 isn't exactly consumer-friendly and Nintendo refuses to do this because of the value of consumer loyalty and future purchases.
Face it, the only reason there is a Wii shortage is because at USD$249.99 the Wii is a very attractive product for a large number of consumers. Supply is not excessively low; demand is just extraordinarily high.
Mike @ Mar 19th 2008 12:21AM
I haven't seen many people consider the other costs Nintendo faces by entirely satisfying demand RIGHT NOW. Data center infrastructure and bandwidth for VC and other online activities. Returns, repairs, customer service. If they produced enough consoles so everybody could have one in the first six months they would have to have a budget for all of that up front. What if there's a problem with one of the production runs? What if there's a bug in one of the highly anticipated game titles? It would erode profits.
I think the metered approach is very wise indeed.
MidnightScott @ Mar 18th 2008 10:42PM
It's not really a conspiracy theory. 360 is just behind Wii in sales, and Microsoft doesn't have a shortage of them now do they. You'd think Nintendo being a game company would make enough of their game system to maximize sales. Go on craigslist and see how many Wii's are on there, people are just buying Wii's to make a profit off of them. I'm sure there are enough Wii's being made, Nintendo just doesn't ship out enough in order to keep the demand going. I honestly don't remember any console shortages with Nintendo in the past so what's the deal?
The last time I saw a Wii was at Walmart on Halloween last year and it was the last one. I got it for my brother for Christmas.
z3r0x @ Mar 18th 2008 11:00PM
I agree with vidGuy. If Nintendo produced more Wiis, theres a chance that they have more Wiis than they can sell. This is a bad thing...And its already happened before, during the Great Depression, farmers produced more crops than they could sell and they got screwed over.
@MidnightScott: 360s are available because more people are buying Wiis, thus making them harder to find at 360s easier to find.
ben @ Mar 19th 2008 12:34AM
I was just walking through Walmart on Superbowl Sunday, saw one in the case and bought it.
Adam @ Mar 19th 2008 12:57AM
I work at a GameStop, so I'd just like to share a few things:
- When we get Wiis (which is about once a week), they only come in shipments of 3 or 6 at a time. Countless times we have been asked whether we have any sort of waiting list for them, and although we did run a promotion like that before Christmas, we aren't any longer. Why people didn't jump on the bandwagon then, I'll never know.
- Wiis were not exceptionally hard to find in 2007 (at least, at our store) until Thanksgiving. It's as if people forgot that their relatives like getting nice things for Christmas. Surely the Wii is just a fad, right? They'll have plenty at the store for little Johnny. Wrong-O.
- The amount of Wiis that each store receives is, according to my manager, linked to how many extras we can sell along with the systems (games, controllers, chargers, etc.).
- As noted here awhile back, the Nintendo store in New York doesn't seem to have any problem keeping their Wiis in stock. (http://nintendo.joystiq.com/2007/12/13/one-place-in-the-u-s-is-still-getting-wiis-daily/)
Like the massive release date list in GameStop's database, I imagine that this six-month figure is just a projection. They've probably got no better idea about it than you or I.
scaught @ Mar 19th 2008 12:31PM
vidGuy hit the nail on the head. Nintendo isn't creating a shortage on purpose. They just are refusing to invest in a greater number of production facilities. Nintendo, historically, is a financially conservative company. They are notorious for cutting costs on their end and maximizing their profitability (which is why they have been around for so long). They no doubt crunched the numbers and decided the costs of production where already enough. In all honesty, a new production facility isn't placed in motion overnight. Nintendo might have very well just assumed that buy the time a new facility was up and running the swelling demand would probably have already subsided. Such was not the case, but even so, Nintendo is still content with maximizing their profits.
To think that Nintendo is creating a shortage is just stupid logic. Do you think third party developers would stand for that? They already have a tough enough time on that console because they are competing with Nintendo the game developer. But imagine them also not having potential customers because of Nintendo holding on to systems? They would be in an uproar and would leave in droves. So would the stock holders.
This isn’t some large global conspiracy where some company is holding on to their products and laughing as little Timmy walks away from Toys R Us empty handed. This is simply a case of demand still outreaching supply. It is economics.
tuaamin13 @ Mar 19th 2008 4:52PM
It's a shame that most of those units end up on Ebay by people looking for a quick buck. I mean, go on there now and you'll probably see 4000 Wiis for sale, going for the average price of $350 + $40 shipping. And all it is is "Nintendo Wii + 5 Games (aka Wii Sports) + 2 Controllers (aka Nunchuck + 'mote)" Maybe they'll throw in Wii Party or whatever that game is that is 9 more minigames on a disc and call it +14 games!
People are so stupid to pay 1.5x the MSRP for the thing.
Bassir @ Mar 19th 2008 5:03PM
I'm so glad my dad was able to pick one up two weeks after the system's launch in a GameStop near his workplace.
Mario-x @ Mar 19th 2008 6:02PM
People just love conspiracy theory, unless proven, thay must be assumed untrue. I see no reason why thay would not make them faster then thay are.
Can't realy compair xbox360 to nintendo, xbox dose not have a handheld system (as far as I know), and nintendo has the DS that is selling 590K units a month. Nintendo has the top selling handheld/console, and selling 50%/45% more then PS3 or xbox360. (look back a page of news to find the numbers of consols sold for Feb).
Can pay $70 extra and get one on e-bay, or know what time deliverys are made to gamestop and wait. And next time reserve the system 6 months in advance and avoid having to find one, or sit outside store for 12 hours to get one. I had to wait till 6 PM on release day to pick mine up, had to work, and stores can't be open before noon on sundays.