While you may be a fool for procuring a Wii at Best Buy, I will appropriate a world-class video gaming and interactive entertainment solution through brick-and-mortar retail sales channels. Ha!
Perhaps eventually language will be a complete impediment to understanding.
You say tomato, I say tomahto. I have a low threshhold for pity when it comes to grown men getting expensive toys.
I’m confused about something. How did the OP find out that the local Best Buy was getting a bunch of Wii machines in? Was it advertised that they had them? Did he call and ask? I have no problem with Best Buy not offering the machines if they are planning a sale or something, unless they have advertised them as being available.
You’re lucky to be able to enter a lottery at BB. Over here in Europe, the only way to get one is from fuckers that got lucky in the pre-order game, who’re now hawking them for $700-900 on the web. If my local Nintendo distributer is to be trusted, the moved 325.000 units the first day of its release here.
I remember a thread a year or so ago, where some Doper made fun of the Wii, in effect saying: “as if Nitendo wasn’t enough of a joke, revolution is renamed Wii.”
I’m beginning to realize that it’s the smartest move in the gaming industry ever, Hard core gamers aren’t interested, but there are a lot more people who are not hard core gamers and Wii appeals to them. I walked through a store earlier today and heard a girlfreind pestering her boyfriend about getting a Wii (he was looking at 360 stuff), because of “all the fun we can have. and we can invite epople over and have parties and tournaments and stuff”.
If he wants to get laid, they’re getting a Wii.
I’m not sure if I agree or not, I’m going to google that term for a definition.
I got a Wii for Christmas.
Well, technically, what I got was an inert piece of plastic. Fresh out of the box, the damn thing was broken. Totally broken. Wouldn’t-even-turn-on broken. Of course, there’s no way I can do an in-store return, nobody has any stock. Soo I’e got to mail the damned thing back to Nintendo. Should actually get my Christmas present… oh, in a month or so.
Yeah, that sucked.
No, no. You’re totally backwards. The PS3 is an expensive toy. The whole buzz about Nintendo is that it’s a reasonably priced toy.
And they’re certainly not available everywhere. I’ve been trying to get one for weeks with no luck. I’m not pitching a fit about it, but the thing is still in high demand.
Is Wii a Nintendo product? My daughter wants the Nintendog. I haven’t really researched it because I feel my Atari 2600 from my own childhood is just fine. If she can have the Nindendog on the Wii, I might have to muscle my way to the front of a line at some point, but I doubt it. Especially when she asked for it two Christmases ago.
Yes, the Wii is Nintendo’s newest home console but Nintendogs is for the DS Lite, Nintendo’s hand held portable system.
Correction, Nintendogs is for the DS or the DS Lite, which is a sexier version of the DS.
You’re quite right. Selling more of the same could only ever sell to, well, the same. While I still cringe even when I type ‘Wii’, it’s a brave move which will make them money in the short term, and might push the market in a different direction in the longer term.
Not that this is a ringing endorsement of the technology or anything (we purchased a Wii for our family this Christmas), but our kids love it. The real surprise is how much I’ve enjoyed it as well. Every member of our family (from my Dad, age 55, to my youngest child, age 4) has had loads of fun with it.
Now for my anecdote on the demand and purchase of said Wii. My husband was at the local Wal-Mart-O-Plex to pick up a pair of eyeglasses he’s had replaced and saw that the line in the “eye center” was very long. He decided to browse the store while waiting for the office to clear out, and headed back to electronics.
We’d decided to get a Wii for the kids, so he sauntered up to the electronics cashier and asked if they had any available. Cashier replied with, “Wait right here.”. They had a truck that’d just pulled up to the dock to unload them, so my husband got one fresh off the back. Turns out, though, Wal-Mart was supposed to save them for an “event” as well, but management hadn’t filtered that down to the floor, yet. 
I could have had a Wii… but I just don’t have the money for it. I was at an EB Games looking for a PS2 game for my husband (never did find it, bought something else instead) and I heard someone at the desk say “We only have 5 left” and someone else comment about how they were #4 in line… with no one behind them. I was VERY tempted to step into that line and buy one right away, but I didn’t, because, as I said, I didn’t have the money. We’ll get one eventually, though. I mean, if it’s fun now, it will be fun this summer or next Christmas, right? And by then all the problems will be ironed out (straps!)
Not Best Buy, but Futureshop (arguably the same thing) did something similar to me once. I went to buy Kingdom Hearts II the day it came out (March 28th, I think, a Tuesday) and the guy in the store said that while they did have it in stock in the back room, they weren’t allowed to bring it out and sell it until the Friday, because that way it would match their advertising flyers. Which is dumb, because all the other stores that sell videogames were selling it on the release date. So I went across the parking lot to Toys’R’Us and bought it there. I wonder how many customers offered to pay Future Shop 60$+tx over those two days, and got refused? Genius marketing department, I tell you!
I had to get up at 5:00 in the morning, but at least I only had to wait in line for four hours. 
The Wii has been a great success at our home. Nintendo has succeeded in making my wife do something she’s never done before – ask me, without provocation, if we can play video games.
My nephew brought his Wii over to my mom’s place for our family gift exchange last weekend. Mom has a 61 inch flat-panel widescreen HDTV and the kids pretty much spent all day playing Wii games. It was easy enough for the four and six year olds to pick up and use and they were endlessly entranced. No Call of Duty type games, but it was a trip to see my six year old practicing his golf swing in grandma’s den. The Wii made a favorable impression on my family last weekend in ways other game stations brought over to mom’s for get-togethers, including Playstation and PS2, have not. Those didn’t hold much of anyone’s attention, but the Wii was a fixture of the day. It is definitely different from other consoles.
Enjoy,
Steven
Still wrong. The PS3 is an expensive pile of shit.
Well, to give you an idea about the DS Lite’s sales recently; They’ve sold 900,000 units in the month of November! :eek:
That means for every ~333 people in the US, someone bought it just last month. So yeah, it’s in pretty high demand.
I don’t have numbers on the Wii, but on gaming forums I’m seeing a lot of retail workers talking about how much more demand there is for the Wii.
While it sucks whenever retailers hold something in stock instead of selling it, there’s definitely a huge run on Nintendo’s systems this year.
As a long-time devotee of the company, I’m pleased. I love Microsoft’s work, but the only thing causing me to buy Sony consoles is the continued support from companies like Namco, Square-Enix, Capcom, Konami, and From Software. Especially in recent years they’ve made some bad decisions, in PR if nothing else, and they don’t develop or own the licenses to any games that are particularly memorable. I dare say that with the lack of “must-play” titles at launch (though that’s par for the course with them), the exhorbitant prices, and the scarcity*, Sony may end up marketing themselves right out of being the dominant platform this generation. We’ll see, I guess.
*I’ve been given to understand the price and availability issues are largely due to the inclusion of Sony’s exclusive Blue-Ray formatted DVD player (to help create a large enough user base to encourage movies being released in this format, to help sell dedicated blue-ray players to non-gamers). I hope for their sake it doesn’t end up being the next Beta-Max.
Umm, Nintendo’s repair turnaround is 8-12 business days from the date you ship it off, so hardly a month. Or with their Advance Replacement service, they’ll get a brand new one to your door in 3-4 days.
Sorry to hear about the broken system though - Nintendo has one of the lowest defect rates in the industry, but shit happens.
H3Knuckles? Virtua Fighter 5 just got announced for the X-Box 360.
Yeah, it’s that bad for Sony, now.
Damn Straight. The buzz I’m hearing (I run a computer/console games newsletter in my spare time) is how the Wii is just the absolute bomb in terms of adoption, interest, marketing, and growth. Nintendo is, right now, kicking ass with this thing.
Hell, even Lady Chance told me we should get one. That’s just astonishing.