Getting A Wii Is Hard Work. Also, Kittens Are Cute And The Sky Is Blue.
Last night, I was in Target to grab Mass Effect, and some grandmother asked the sales clerk about the Wii. The answer? "We won't have anymore until after Christmas. Nobody will have any until after Christmas. We get like 50 calls an hour asking us the same thing." Ouch. The Wii is firmly in the Furby seat this year, and that red vested pessimist may be right: if you don't already have a Wii sitting under your TV set, you may be out of luck for quite some time.
No harm in trying, though. BigPictureBigSound has set up an online buying guide for the Wii with a few links and suggestions. Yahoo has a similar guide that also purports to let you check some brick and mortar retailers in your area. Still, when the machine manages to clear 1400 units in ten minutes, you know the odds are against you.
If there's a silver lining, maybe this will make everyone stop realize just how commercial that Christmas has become, and how ridiculous everyone acts this time of year. Maybe some people will take the money they would have spent on a Wii and donate it to a food depository, help some families can't afford toys, or ... hell, just keep your place in line. I hear that they might get another shipment next weekend!
[Links via GoNintendo, Destructoid]
Dawdle
Posted to Video Games on 25 November 2007
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: nintendo, shortages, wii
Could be true and he could be talking out of his ass. I wouldn't put much stock in the word of a Target clerk, they aren't particularly in the know about the inner workings of inventory.
The only time I felt I got an honest answer from a Target employee was last January when I was trying to acquire a Wii. She told me that most of the time individual stores don't know what they are getting until the delivery trucks unload the inventory at the docks.
I got my Wii by going to NowInStock.net, signed up to have them email me when it came in stock on Amazon. I dropped what I was doing at work as soon as I got the email and snagged one before they all sold out. I still get the alerts and I'm seeing that Wiis are still coming in stock on Amazon but they generally sell out in less than ten minutes.
And here I thought the drama was coming to an end when I was in a Virgin Megastore in NYC last week and saw 3 or 4 of them behind the counter. And the person in front of me in line was buying one. Guess not. So how many Christmases WILL the Wii be the hottest toy?
I work at Virgin in Times Square..and we get about 20 of them every other day...the Nintendo World Store in Rockafeller Plaza gets them every morning.
I doubt the "none til Christmas" quote was accurate, the guy was just trying to save himself the trouble of trying to pin down a date or having to answer the phones every three minutes just to tell the (probably angry) customer "We just don't know."
Stupid customers wanting to know when/how to buy a product... ;)
Yeah, I wouldn't worry about the poor fella, he's just stressed out. The reality in my mind is not that our society is consumeristic (we've known that for a long time now). It's that Nintendo simply needs to step up to the GD plate and answer consumer demand. Period. I think it is an absolute shame that you would make this many customers wait and toil and fight for soooo long. Buy another manufacturer, contract it out, do whatever it takes.
I'm just wondering why the Wii is still selling out a year after it was released? You'd think by now all the people that wanted one had gotten one...
I am one of the lucky ones who were selected for the Amazon Customer Votes thing. I got to buy a Wii for all of $79.
however, I have had one since launch. thanks to ebay, I can at least count on a very green Christmas.