TechImpact / it happens there first

Since its launch in May the Wii Fit has been harder to find than a 1996 Christmas era "Tickle Me Elmo". With rumors of intentional shortages and an apparently world wide inability for retailers to keep stock on the shelves, many analysts have questioned if Nintendo is harming the Wii's long term success with constant shortages for its popular products, including the Wii itself.

Those analysts might want to try buying a Wii Fit and then see if their perspective changes. This previous Sunday I did just that.

My story begins with a mistake—I ASKED my girlfriend what she wanted for her birthday. A week of searching store after store left me no closer to the one thing she apparently "really really" wanted, the Wii Fit.

I did find one lead. Best Buys were apparently holding stocks of the Wii Fit in stores for release on Sunday to match their Sunday advertising. The pleasant sales clerk warned me "show up REALLY early".

But I had an ace up my sleeve. A Best Buy opened a few days ago in a newly developed part of Keller Texas, and I was confident that not too many people would know about it yet.

The fact that my search for video game that was released weeks prior sounds like a detective story might be giving you an idea of where I am heading.

The buy went down like this:

1- I arrived at 9:50 (the store opened at 11) only to witness an already daunting line of people.

2- At 10:20 three Best Buy employees began handing out "tickets" (Extended warranty registration cards with numbers written on them). If you got a ticket you got a Wii Fit.
3- I ended up with #20 out of about 25 or so Wii Fits for sale. There were a number of people that showed up just minutes after I did that went home empty handed.

The kicker in all of this was that Best Buy was handing out two different kinds of tickets—one for the Wii Fit and another for the Wii. Even well over a year after release there were still customers in line for the Wii, and many of the went home with out getting one. One grandmother I spoke to told me that she had taken it upon herself to buy Wiis for all of her children and grandchildren and that this was the 5th or 6th Wii she had purchased. Her story was more amazing for the fact that she wasn't waiting in line for a Wii for her children this time, she was waiting with HER mother because her mother wanted one.

Nintendo's position is typical economics. Why spend the money to increase capacity to meet what might be the peak of your demand curve when you are pretty sure your customers will wait until you can produce more with your current facilities? It is a gamble on Nintendo's part. As one IDC analyst wrote "When does the consumer get frustrated and move on?". If my anecdotal experience Sunday is reflective of the demand at large, we are far from reaching that point with the Wii.

by Jerry Gamble