Gamestop: Wii Shortage to Continue Through Christmas
Dan DeMattero is the new CEO of the largest video game retailer in the world, Gamestop. During an interview with gamedaily.com, he talked a little bit of the popularity of the Nintendo Wii, and how he thinks the shortage of systems will continue through the holidays.
“I’ve never seen this type of demand before. I know they’re making more, but we’re still short like everybody else. I think we’ll have a continued [Wii] shortage this Christmas.”
I want the readers to think about this, when this Christmas roles around it’ll be past the two year mark when the Wii was released. The system has been ’sold out’ everywhere since it’s debut back in November of 06′, but the sales make it seem like it came out last month. Not in the history of this industry have we seen anything even close to this hype, and quite frankly, I don’t think many products that are sold in stores have seen this type of success.
It’s amazing to see Nintendo struggle for so long, Heck, at one point some ‘experts’ thought they should just go 3rd party, much like what Sega did a number of years ago. But they refused and many of those same ‘experts’ thought the Big N’s time was limited.
But here they are, love em’ or hate em’, their the biggest thing in the video game business right now.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:32 am
This “shortage” is manufactured. I have friends who work at gamestop and Best Buy. They both say that they put out 2 or three to make it look like they’re all selling out, then they get more from the back, and put them there again. lol this system has been out for almost 2 years… There’s no way it’s in that high of demand. Don’t let them deceive you. Especially YOU slash gamer!!
September 9th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Just to give you an idea of how many systems Nintendo sold, Gamecube sold a a little more than 21 million. The Nintendo Wii has already topped that with 29 million.
The Xbox 360 has sold a respectable 19 million, which makes it in second place in the ‘console war.’ But remember, the Xbox came out a year before the Wii.
The numbers say the hype is real. I also know many people in retail world. Best Buy on occasion will hold systems in the back, but not for ‘hype,’ but because when the Wii is in the Sunday flyer, they want to make sure they have them available for customers.