Many of use are frustrated by the fact that after 5 months, its still near impossible to pick up one of these Wii systems.
My question is, how does this compared with previous systems, like PS2, Xbox 360, or XBox? Did any of them experience console shortages 5 months after release?
(Wasn’t sure if this was GC or CS)
I can’t really measure what kind of shortage the Xbox had, because I was never really interested in one. But the PS2 and Xbox 360 both had shortages until about April/May after their respective launches.
So no, this isn’t exactly new.
In the Wii’s case, it’s an artificial shortage caused primarily by stores hoarding them for novelty sales “events” rather than just putting them out on the shelves as they arrive. It makes it seem like “you can never find one” because they’re not put on the shelves, even though they may have hundreds of systems hiding in the storeroom that they’re stockpiling for a “be here sunday morning at 10:00 am and get a Wii!” event.
Bullshit.
If stores put out the Wiis as soon as they were available they would still sell out in hours and the average customer would still never be able to find them.
And I’m not at all bitter that Kmart advertised Wiis for this weekend and not a single Kmart out of the 4 I called had them. Nope, not bitter at all.
This only makes sense if you think that the coming week’s supply is enough to satisfy all the demand for the product. Everywhere they do one of those “events,” they’re sold out in under an hour. And the things are still fetching MSRP+$100 on eBay.
It’s not an artificial shortage.
I didn’t mean to imply that there are enough Wiis to go around and that the shortage is completely fabricated. They definitely can’t keep up with the demand, BUT the shortage is being artificially stoked by the retailers’ behavior. At the very least, your average consumer would have a chance of “running into one” in the store if they’d just put them on the shelves when they came in, instead of it being true that you “literally cannot find one on shelves” because they won’t even put them out.
You ain’t lying. I called a dozen places looking for one today. Nada. I need a Wii!
Cite? The retailers I talk to all claim that when they get them in, they sell them out by the afternoon.
I’ve not seen any Wii promotion things - short of the pre-order ones for the release date, and people were still on those lists by second and third deliveries.
I got lucky with mine - they had literally just tagged them up when I asked for one.
You sure? I’m pretty confident Microsoft lowered the price of the Xbox in June of that year (or around thereof), which I doubt would have occurred were they still selling out. I also had absolutely no problem finding one at that time, nor do I recall there being a significant shortage after the holiday season, but I concede I can’t recall exactly.
What I am certain of, however, is the amount of press the Xbox received six months after release, pales in comparison to what the Wii is getting, which suggests these shortages are more profound than you’re giving credit.
I’m surprised that Wiis are still in short supply, we’ve had ours a couple of months now. When we got ours we walked into the R zone at 10:00am on a Sunday, they must have just started handing them out we were 12-14 from the front and last in line. The manager was asking who was in line for a Wii we were number 7! Half the people in line weren’t even there for a Wii. we weren’t either originally but decided to get one since they were available. We actually didn’t get what we originally wanted because they didn’t have a replacement ac adapter for my daughters DS.
Slightly off topic, but an anecdote I’ve wanted to share for some time…
After the first shipment of Wiis showed up (and immediately sold out), there was a wait of several weeks before another was available anywhere near Casa Wheeljack. I was wandering around the local Wal-Mart after midnight when an announcement came over the PA: a Wii had just been received and would be sold to the first person to ask for it at the electronics counter. I made a comment to the wife about how it was probably already sold before the announcement was finished, she agreed, and we went on about our shopping. About ten minutes later a second announcement came, to the effect that anyone who wanted to buy the Wii had better get to the counter fast because they only had one. I wandered over to the electronics section and sure enough, they had exactly one. After the third announcement over the PA, I called a buddy of mine and left him a message asking if he wanted me to pick it up for him. He called about ten minutes later and said yes.
There must have been a few hundred people in the Wal-Mart that night, nobody had seen a Wii for sale in weeks, and the only person interested in buying it was fifty miles away talking to me on a cell phone. I was more than a little spooked.
I’m talking about the Xbox 360, which has never had a price cut, and which did have a pretty profound shortage it’s first six months.
You’re talking about the first Xbox and you’re right, I think the Xbox was pretty available from day one. Probably because it was constructed with off the shelf PC parts that Microsoft could have gotten from anywhere.
Personally, I’d be more spooked at a retail store having a few hundred people in it after midnight. You live in Transylvania or something?
If you examine the situation, though, you’re seeing a product come onto the shelves after midnight, and stay there all of 30 minutes before being sold. That is a retail dream.
I have no idea where you live but every place I have talked to just plain didn’t have them. The average teenage salesman at the retail stores I visited pretty much isn’t into lying about the stock in the back room. They are usually very happy to talk about their schedules, the schedules of their competitors, their friends attempts to buy, etc. Most of them said the same thing, “We stock them as soon as they come in”. The only variation I’ve heard is that some stock them at a specific time the next day (10:00 am) if its a 24 hour store.
So I ask, do you have any evidence yourself that its “true” that the retailers aren’t putting them on the shelves? Or are you just overly suspicious?
That’s not to say the somebody isn’t purposefully limiting supply. But that somebody appears to by the supplier, not the retail stores.
From what I’ve found lately is that if you want one it does take a bit more effort than going to the store and finding the shelf empty.
Most stores around here (Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, Toy R Us) that put them in the weekly ad end up with about 15-20 units being held for the ad. Show up when the doors open on a Sunday morning and you’ll probably find 4 or 5 people (not dozens) waiting to get one and they’ll slowly sell out by mid afternoon.
I showed up at Target the second week of February to get mine this way 10 minutes before the store opened to find 4 people waiting in line outside. Some college girl in line was complaining that Target was “soooooo stupid” since they only bought 20 units from Nintendo to sell and they should have bought 100 since they could have easily sold them. :rolleyes:
I didn’t feel like teaching supply and demand on a Sunday morning. Some black lady with her teenage son finally chimed in with “uh, maybe cause they could only get 20.”
College girl looked dumbfounded.
There’s no cite needed for the gimmick “event” sales; they’re going on at a weekly rate all around you. Look around. Other posters have chimed in and mentioned them as well. No debate there.
That’s how I found mine at Target a month or two ago. I just walked in and, voila, they had just gotten a shipment that morning and there were a bunch of Wiis (about eight consoles) sitting behind the glass case in the video game section in the middle of the afternoon. No fanfare, no blazing signs reading “WE HAVE WIIs HERE!” no portends of their coming or anything. In fact, I just assumed they were empty boxes at first, walked up to the counter and asked. They looked at me weirdly and said “No, those aren’t empty boxes. You want one?” Course, another employee defended me and said to the employee serving me, “See, I told you people would think those were just empty boxes!”
Wiis are very hard to get here in Las Vegas, I hear. One of my husbands coworkers found one over the weekend. The store had three, stuffed off in a corner somewhere. Someone saw this guy with the Wii and people started clammering for the remaining two. Some guy offered him like 100 buks to give him the Wii to buy. He said no, beacuse he had been looking for one for quite a while.
and for a slight hijack…
I have found that in areas where most retail and grocery stores close at a “normal hour” that the Wal-Mart is the only place open.
Here in Las Vegas where a lot of places are open 24/7, Wal-Marts are still packed at 2 A.M.
I personally haven’t been in a Wal-Mart in nearly 4 years, but was out doing overnight field work and one of our wrenches broke… Wal-Mart was the only place nearby to buy a replacement. My coworker went in to buy a wrench and I stayed outside with the work truck. It was about 2 A.M. and the place was so busy that it took over a half an hour for her to buy the wrench.
I got’cha. Your first mention of the “Xbox” (which lacked the "360) and then the mention of the same generation PS2 threw me off.
But you are right that 360s were selling out several months after release, but it’s also important to note they were pushing significantly fewer out the door than Nintendo was. They had known production problems, which greatly reduced the amount of units they were able to put together.