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Wii: 6 Months Later
maximumzero
I...wait, what?New Orleans, LARegistered User regular
I...wait, what?New Orleans, LARegistered User regular
I was shocked as hell this morning.
I work at a CompUSA here in Louisiana, and I arrived at work around 10AM, as we had some product training to do before the store opened at 12. As I got out of my truck and walked into the building I saw a man and two childen get out of an SUV and walk towards the building, I didn't think much of it, silently laughing to myself when I figured that they didn't know that we wouldn't be open for another two hours and they'd have showed up for nothing.
At around 11:30 once the training was over and we prepped the store for opening I noticed, as the other employees did, that there was a line of people outside about 15-20 long and steadily growing. I had a "WTF" reaction when I asked my coworkers if there was some crazy sale going on that I didn't know about, but nobody had an idea what was up even as we had thumbed through the ad not too much earlier.
Then I realized it. On page three of the ad, in big text: "Nintendo Wii--In Stock and Ready to Play"
"Fuck." I exclaimed to myself, because we had none, and I knew we were going to have some pissed off people, some waiting as early as 6AM, from what I had heard.
Of course, in the end we let everyone that wanted to make a reserve, but still, the fact that they had to wait for nothing kinda sucked for them.
But going back to the thread at hand...does anyone else find this nuts that, almost six months after being released, there are STILL lines being formed outside of stores to get a Wii. I don't believe I've ever seen such demand for any sort of product for a long period of time.
I work at a CompUSA here in Louisiana, and I arrived at work around 10AM, as we had some product training to do before the store opened at 12. As I got out of my truck and walked into the building I saw a man and two childen get out of an SUV and walk towards the building, I didn't think much of it, silently laughing to myself when I figured that they didn't know that we wouldn't be open for another two hours and they'd have showed up for nothing.
At around 11:30 once the training was over and we prepped the store for opening I noticed, as the other employees did, that there was a line of people outside about 15-20 long and steadily growing. I had a "WTF" reaction when I asked my coworkers if there was some crazy sale going on that I didn't know about, but nobody had an idea what was up even as we had thumbed through the ad not too much earlier.
Then I realized it. On page three of the ad, in big text: "Nintendo Wii--In Stock and Ready to Play"
"Fuck." I exclaimed to myself, because we had none, and I knew we were going to have some pissed off people, some waiting as early as 6AM, from what I had heard.
Of course, in the end we let everyone that wanted to make a reserve, but still, the fact that they had to wait for nothing kinda sucked for them.
But going back to the thread at hand...does anyone else find this nuts that, almost six months after being released, there are STILL lines being formed outside of stores to get a Wii. I don't believe I've ever seen such demand for any sort of product for a long period of time.
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I am curious though to the attachment rate of games for the system. Are all these people that are buying the Wii buying games for it, or just playing Wii Sports over and over? Anyone know?
Still no nunchucks.
So, yeah, I'm quite surprised. I managed to pick mine up in early December by going to a Toys R Us at 5 AM and waiting until they opened 4 hours later. At that time, I figured it'd be easy to find one by the end of January.
My Backloggery
since it was the first wiimote I had ever seen I bought it and a nunchuck.
And then got soundly thrashed by a friend in Madden and cried a little.
Then utterly destroyed him in all of wii sports.
The Wii's fun is exponentially greater the more controllers you have.
I don't think you understand just how many wii's are being sold.
My dad thinks it might be artificial demand, but I doubt it.
You're right about Wii Sports 2, that could destroy Halo 3. The mainstream frickin' love that game. It's like DDR for them.
And screw all the stores like CompUSA and Circuit City holding them for fliers. You screw up itrackr that way, jerks.
The sell out was kind of cool in the beginning, because I was happy for Nintendo's success. But 6 months later, my relationship with Nintendo is turning into an Ike-Tina one. "Reggie, why you making me hit you so?"
You don't hit Reggie. Reggie hits you, and you will like it.
That is like 1,316,000 wiis a month.
There is no artificial demand, just demand.
According to Wikipedia, they have shipped more Wiis than Sony has shipped PS3s. I would say that is evidence they aren't producing it at a slower rate than they could.
Nothing's taking so long. There's just a fairly unprecedented level of demand, and I imagine even Nintendo wasn't quite expecting it. The system is weaker because it allows them to lower the price.
Does anyone have numbers on how many units other consoles shipped in 6 months?
That said, I still haven't seen one in the wild. However, I do notice that Nunchucks and Wiimotes are fairly common now (classic controllers seem less common). I went to Toys R Us, Circuit City, Best Buy, and Target this weekend, and they all had plenty of those...
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
I remember mid-February of 06 being lucky as hell in getting a 360 off Toysrus.ca, but I don't remember how long that lasted (because after I got one I totally stopped paying attention)
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I too am baffled. I didn't think I'd be able to just walk in and get one on launch day, but I was flabbergasted that they were still unavailable after the new year.
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
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More Friend Codes!
Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
Exactly. I was almost lead to believe that the PS2 launch had an artificial supply problem way back in 2000, but then I realized it was stupid. Even when selling a console at a loss you want as many in the hands of consumers as possible so you can make your money back on games. Plus the whole point of an artifical shortage is to come back a few weeks later with the supply you've been hording and satisfy your ginned up demand.
Yeah. Demand for Wii >/\10 Xbox 360
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
Are they sending you a new one, or a refurbished one? I have to get mine replaced, but I keep hesitating, because I don't want a refurb unit.
So, are you kicking it to turn it off or something? I remember reading about bricking around the launch, but not recently.
Now, months later, they are sold-out. It's like the opposite of what should be happening. The hype was muted at launch, but now it just keeps increasing.
I don't really think it's a good thing for gamers either. While the Wiis are sold-out, Nintendo has no incentive to release their AAA first-party games. It would just make the shortage worse. Once demand starts to fall (or Nintendo finally gets their second manufacturing contract sorted out), then they can release some games and create a second surge in demand.
I had to send mine off, stopped reading disks. Tweaked the laser a bit and sent me back mine. Another person I know had a borked firmware issue that got some of the launch Wiis, he got a brand spanking new one and an extra remote for his troubles, lucky bastard, most people just got reflashed Wiis from that lot.
Same here. By early december I was ready to camp out, and so on december 16th, at 10pm I went camping at best buy and was number 16 out of 24. Thank god we had a mild winter here in wisconsin.
I wish they had playable demos for people interested but don't have the system yet.
Here the Wii goes for about $500usd, the 360 premium for $800usd, and the PS3 for $1000usd.
Also. I have yet to see a single Wii in any store I've entered whenever I've looked
From what I have seen: finding nunchuks is no longer too much of a problem, Point Cards are a bitch to find and so are the Wiimotes (I see the Wii Play package more than the controller separately), Classic Controller is not as hard to find as the Wiimote but is not as easy to find as the nunchuk either, and I haven't even been paying attention to the whole cable scenario.
People are actually buying the Nintendo endorsed SD memory cards too and they need to stop that. So many better deals elsewhere.
Not sure what the attachment rate is now but I remember that around launch and the proceeding months the attachment rate was said to be 3-4 games per system. Basically, it has a good chance of being decently high because the system is cheap enough where people can then afford to buy more games and if they are the Wii Sports type they can buy another mini game extravaganza title. I would think that it is still higher than the PS3 attachment rate by a game or two and pretty comparable to the 360s. This statement is something I back up with no evidence whatsoever.
http://ps3.qj.net/PS3-and-Wii-attach-rates-go-up/pg/49/aid/86529