As some of you know, I work in a video games store. We are allocated our Wiis by the official UK distributor for independant gaming shops. We don't really hear much from them as to when and how many we will get. It basically worked out as something like: 1st batch: promised 15 Day before launch: 8 arrive After phone call, told next batch arrives next week. Inform the last 7 on our reserved list they'll be waiting a week. Next week: 7 arrive. After that, we didn't hear much, they just turned up as and when, usually only a couple of units, but we DID get about 6 just after Christmas. Now, it is pretty steady: 2 machines, approx. every 3 weeks. I was drinking from a soft drink can the other day, when I noticed this offer, whereby you can win a Wii system by buying a can of (mostly Coca-Cola produced) soft drink. This seems to be a tie-in with Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper and GAME. There are 10 systems to be won every day (with a TV and mini fridge of drink) for 8 weeks. That adds up to 560 Wii systems in total. In this 8 weeks, we will have received 4 Wii systems to sell from the distributor - all of which are pre-reserved by people who have been waiting months. Our shop has been running 10 years, making it the oldest surviving games retailer in this town... in fact, you could include several neighbouring towns, too! Our only direct competitor in this town is the mighty GAME, and they (as Electronics Boutique) moved in some time after we had been running, as a small section in a department store (Debenhams). Surely this makes us a fairly important indie? OK, I know there are indie chain stores, which seem better catered for by the Nindie.com scheme, and in my mind, aren't what I'd call a true indie! I should explain the scheme. The distributor, Koch, set up a scheme called Nindie.com which was supported by Nintendo, and then became Nindie.com. They are Nintendo's preferred distributor in the UK, and offer some form of incentive scheme, I believe. I can't really remember the details, but it seemed to be along the lines of the more you bought (and the more stores you owned), the more you got. The only thing I can remember is that they offered marketing advice. It seemed to equate to.... stores like us get posters etc. Chain "indies" get in-house training. So what does this mean for Wii allocation? Are we all equal, as should be? Or are some more equal than others? Err, but isn't that communism??!?! It is interesting to see that soft drinks companies seem to be getting more than the dedicated retailers! That said, I am not sure who is REALLY running the promotion. And that is quite scary, as you HAVE to give your mobile number to enter, and I couldn't see anything clear written about what they do or don't do with said numbers. I wrote to MCV (UK trade weekly) suggesting they may like to consider this subject for an article. I received a reply saying they want to print my letter. Nice! Anyway, what is the situation like where you are? I am particularly interested to hear from those of you in the UK. Can you get Wiis off the shelf? Do larger stores (e.g. GAME, or high street electronics retailers) get more systems allocated than the smaller stores? Are shops still putting people on a waiting list? Of course, those of you in the rest of the World are welcome to comment - I'd love to see the trend! Is it a Worldwide shortage still?
In Ealing, London it`s been hard to get a wii since launch, shops getting in 10-15 at a time (well GAME was) not sure about the gamestation or the other outlets in the area (currys/dixons/woolworths etc) I hear ther stream is getting better but maybe its because all the die hard wii ppl are going the internet route which will inevitably leave more wii`s on the shop shelves.
I was a lucky one, I walked into HMV a few days after the launch, and they had some on the shelves, so I bought one. Simple as that. I had friends looking everywhere for them, in fact, the last of my friends who was wanting one finally had his pre-order allocated by GAME two weeks ago. But it seems like they aren't as hard to find now in England, you can tell this by the sales on eBay, going for the usual price rather than the inflated price when you can't actually get them in the shops, and looking through the local Argos I noticed they had some on display in the back ready to be sold. But why has it taken Nintendo so long to stabalise the flow of Wii's into the UK? I worked in Gamestation for a fair while, and quit a few months ago, and I must say the Wii shortage was similar to the Xbox360 situation at launch, but that stabalised after a fortnight, as did the sales of PSP's, as we had a constant flow, a certain amount of units every so often. Perhaps the reason for this could be that they've been stockpiling Wii's that would of normally gone to the UK into this promotional offer, I mean, its worked for them, look at the demand there was a week after launch!
Do you know for a fact that the soft drink company is actually sitting on a batch of 560 Wiis? I mean, do they promise winners to ship their prize immediately? Maybe the winners will receive their prize when stock becomes available to the soft drink company. Also, from Nintendo's point of view the soft drink company is a better account since they generate massive publicity for the Wii whereas the local gameshop does not. So yeah, a local gameshop is not as equal as an international soft-drink company. I also had the same kind of discussion with a Dutch game shop proprietor. He also felt he wasn't getting his fair share of the Wii action, yet he refused to import Japanese or USA Wii system. Europe will keep getting shafted by Nintendo if stores only buy from the "official" distributor. If shops and chains are willing to work around the distributor monopoly and start selling parallel imports they would not have to put up with these issues.
Grey imports aren't a good idea. We would get in a LOT of trouble. You aren't actually allowed to do it. They haven't passed European safety tests etc. Plus we'd be in trouble with Nintendo, and could easily have our accounts frozen with pissed-off distributors...... Oh, then there's the power issue. And TV. You would HAVE to have an NTSC-compatible TV, and a step-down transformer. That looks really unprofessional. Plus, we'd have to import games, too.
I appreciate then I'm local to you retro, but even when I've to places like London, Bristol and Bath I still haven't seen any on the shelves. We picked up a reserved one at launch, but the lack of games, lack of online gaming, lack of Nintendo interest/support, and the last generation graphics make this a real 'dead duck' of a machine in this household
Sounds to me more like Nintendo is having supply problems, or is diliberately keeping the numbers of Wiis shipped low in order to stimulate demand somehow. Just seems funny to me that so long after launch, with the fact that it's still selling like hotcakes, they still haven't managed to adequately supply stores like your own, which leads me to beleive it's part of some convoluted marketing strategy.
It's borderline absurd. If it's deliberate (which I seriously doubt), it's a complete misreading of their demographic. The people Nintendo are trying to attract are the kind that just want to walk into a game store and buy the thing. They aren't relying on the rabid early teens of the late 80s who will push and push their parents to find what they're after. Restricting supply just loses sales. I can't imagine what it is that they're having trouble with, but they should've sorted it out by now.
