[quietlife]

I definitely don't do conspiracy theories normally. However, I was told today that (while trying to pick up a DS) that there are actually lots of DS/Wii's in the country, but Nintendo won't release them.

They're doing it to make the consoles seem more popular than they are (creating an artificial demand), keep up prices and stop discounting.

Now, I don't know if this is true, but if it is, Nintendo should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. It's a disgraceful way to treat the consumer. I hope it all goes pear shaped and large numbers of people buy elsewhere, causing significant loss to the company.

[dannius]

I don't suppose Nintendo care if retailers discount their products, they still sell them to them at the same price. If anything retailers discounting and making value bundles is a good thing for console manufacturers as it helps shift hardware.

I seriously doubt there is any conspiracy, at the end of the day Nintendo want as many consoles in peoples homes as they can. More installed users means more game sales, and that is where Nintendo (and Sony & Microsoft) make most of their money.

It is bizarre that it seems to only be the UK that suffers from this, but we can be panic buying idiots at times!

[t-force]

I wouldn't say it only seems to be the UK suffering from this problem - it's still very hard to find Wiis in the US most of the time.

[zAndy1]

Yeah but false demand 'justifies' selling bundles which means more games sold. If supply was plentiful do you think half as many people would be paying £250-£300 for bundles?

[nil102]

Originally Posted by zAndy1

Yeah but false demand 'justifies' selling bundles which means more games sold. If supply was plentiful do you think half as many people would be paying £250-£300 for bundles?

£250-£300 for a bundle...None of it...My local independant Console Connections(Truro) want £299 for the basic Wii/Sports pack

[corskey]

there still seem to be quite a few in France and Germany

[Jay]

I don't know for certain if Nintendo are indeed pulling a stunt like this, but it won't be the first time they've been involved in controversy with regards to retail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2375967.stm

[RobertArms]

I Work in GAME and i can confirm that it is a marketing ploy by Nintendo.

in my store, even though we get lots of solus Wii & DS we are made to create ad-hoc bundles including Gamecare ( repair protection ) and even cuddly mario toys !!.

we are then told to put each console on show behind the counter with these " bundles" and tell the customer that it needs to be sold this way as it is an internet return etc.

when each console is sold we just bring another one from the back.

i personally do not agree with this, its just we are under so much pressure to flog gamecare and add ons.

the thing is the customers always buy the bundles so in a twisted way it works !

[Jay]

Originally Posted by CardinalsFan

I Work in GAME and i can confirm that it is a marketing ploy by Nintendo.

in my store, even though we get lots of solus Wii & DS we are made to create ad-hoc bundles including Gamecare ( repair protection ) and even cuddly mario toys !!.

we are then told to put each console on show behind the counter with these " bundles" and tell the customer that it needs to be sold this way as it is an internet return etc.

when each console is sold we just bring another one from the back.

i personally do not agree with this, its just we are under so much pressure to flog gamecare and add ons.

the thing is the customers always buy the bundles so in a twisted way it works !

Where do Nintendo come into this? It sounds like it's Game using obligatory bundles to flog their own stuff.

[Zoogly]

Yeah, where does Nintendo come into this?
Game doesn't really sell much of anything solo unless it's preowned, but if you've got a stock of Wiis and DS's in the back, how many do you have and often do you get a delivery of them?
If Nintendo are supplying you (and other sellers) with a plentiful supply, it's not Nintendo, but rather the sellers that are artificially inflating the market for Christmas.
Unless of course Nintendo has an "agreement" with them...

[BenchyUK]

I can completely believe if Nintendo are making false hype of short supplies. The want to keep the hype and excitement as long as they can. When it starts to die down they can continue it with a price drop.

Apparently they are doing the same with the DS and as soon as the sales drop on tose they are releasing a new DS console

Nintendo may be a family looking company but they play dirty too just like SONY and Microsoft

[RobertArms]

sorry guys - i feel i should explain better !

we get a nintendo rep visiting once a week and even HE told us that the problem is not a lack of stock available. its simply the fact that nintendo are keeping machines back until the last minute in order to keep people talking about the product. they also leak false info like " we have chartered planes to ensure more stock" and " we will cut the ads until more stock is readily available"

Where do Nintendo come into this? It sounds like it's Game using obligatory bundles to flog their own stuff.

The add ons are not in order to flog games own stuff, lets be honest we have not got that much of interest for the Wii as far as the "gameware" brand is concerned. the only own brand item that truly sells is the sports pack with the clip on golf club etc.

We are targeted to achieve 10% of bundle value in the form of any add on sales be them own brand or not.

Yeah, where does Nintendo come into this?
Game doesn't really sell much of anything solo unless it's preowned, but if you've got a stock of Wiis and DS's in the back, how many do you have and often do you get a delivery of them?
If Nintendo are supplying you (and other sellers) with a plentiful supply, it's not Nintendo, but rather the sellers that are artificially inflating the market for Christmas.
Unless of course Nintendo has an "agreement" with them...

You would be surprised what we sell, statistically we are the leading high street retailer for games. we now own gamestation and there preowned program does a lot better than ours due to the higher trade in prices they offer. they offer better trade in prices so they have more stock, so they can also sell preowned games cheaper than us. we still do ok due to the fact that the our markup is much higher than gamestations.

stock wise for the last 2 months we have had wii delivered on mondays and fridays, we get on average 10 boxes of consoles ( 30 consoles ) on each delivery, this past week we have started giving out raffle tickets to the inevitable queue that forms before we open ( any other users in liverpool will verify this ).

we get solus consoles and sell the first 10 or so using the weekly deals from the marketing bulletin, the rest, as i explained earlier, we make adhoc bundles to gain extra gamecare and add on sales.

although 60 consoles a week may not sound like a lot, believe me we are a very small store. the bigger stores get more than us.

i agree that retailers are definetly inflating the market, i would be very surprised if you can find ANY high street retailer willing to sell you a solus console.

i know i am making a bold statement here but shortly you will see a VAST increase in Wii consoles available throughout the UK. I know this due to internal emails from head office.

GAME has always bundled games with the Wii, even during the months when you could easily by a wii Solo, it's no surprise that during this time of high demand GAME makes the Bundles even bigger and that other retailers follow suit, it only makes sense as Retailers make a far higher profit from it's Software then hardware. I doubt Nintendo is having to ask Retailers to do it.

It's very likely that Nintendo is holding units of the Wii back, but not for the reasons you have claimed, there simply isn't enough Wii stock to satisfy demand, they could sell it all and there would still be out of stock. And this buzz would continue....So why are they doing it??

Because of the Competition. When do people buy there gaming consoles for there kids/family/partner? Christmas. Nintendo knows that if they don't sell a Wii now they might buy a Xbox360 Arcade instead (which is only £30 more) and so they might never sell that family a Wii.

In the next couple of weeks expect to see these stocks released to give Christmas shoppers the Wii's they want and so won't loose these important customers to Sony and Microsoft.

It's common practice to stock up for the Christmas rush, but normally there is excess stock during the rest of year, Nintendo's production hike of 1.8m per month World wide was not enough.

(last week the Wii sold 92K which is almost 5x as much as any normal week according to VGchartz.com)

CardinalsFan can you confirm that Nintendo actually asked GAME to create bundles? How do you know these leaked rumours of flights of Wii's are false (not that I doubt it! )

[Smurfin]

Anyone who thinks this isn't marketing by nintendo is naive....they are getting the best marketing in the world, and what's it costing them? Nothing!!!!

I took my Wii back to Argos last night and they looked at me like I was stupid. "Why are you returning it, they're like gold dust?" they asked. I told them I'd had another arrive from Amazon and didn't need this one, but in truth I wanted to say: "Because the wii is cr*p, it's a pure gimmick and like last year, I'll play it over Xmas then leave it to collect dust".

That's just my opinion - I'm not saying that to start a "Wii is crap" debate - just to demonstrate that artificial hype is the cause of many sales (See the "Is hunting for a Wii better than the Wii itself?" thread), and to my shame I did it again this year! The only difference is that I switched it on, played tennis for 30 mins, then tried RE4 and wondered why I was playing a 5 year old game that looked crap with controls which are frankly unnecessary....I'd been had

ALOT of people love the Wii (and I CAN understand why), but all of a sudden you've got people clamouring for it simply because they can't get one. The demand is artificially inflated. You can already see that the week before Xmas, more and more wiis and ds' are out there, but Nintendo have already done their job

Going back to the first line of this post.....Nintendo have been distributing Wii's for well over 12 months now. Any company that can't ramp up production over a 13 month period doesn't deserve to be in business. Either that or they're very clever. Nintendo are the latter imho...

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Anyone who thinks this isn't marketing by nintendo is naive....they are getting the best marketing in the world, and what's it costing them? Nothing!!!!

I took my Wii back to Argos last night and they looked at me like I was stupid. "Why are you returning it, they're like gold dust?" they asked. I told them I'd had another arrive from Amazon and didn't need this one, but in truth I wanted to say: "Because the wii is cr*p, it's a pure gimmick and like last year, I'll play it over Xmas then leave it to collect dust".

That's just my opinion - I'm not saying that to start a "Wii is crap" debate - just to demonstrate that artificial hype is the cause of many sales (See the "Is hunting for a Wii better than the Wii itself?" thread), and to my shame I did it again this year! The only difference is that I switched it on, played tennis for 30 mins, then tried RE4 and wondered why I was playing a 5 year old game that looked crap with controls which are frankly unnecessary....I'd been had

ALOT of people love the Wii (and I CAN understand why), but all of a sudden you've got people clamouring for it simply because they can't get one. The demand is artificially inflated. You can already see that the week before Xmas, more and more wiis and ds' are out there, but Nintendo have already done their job

Going back to the first line of this post.....Nintendo have been distributing Wii's for well over 12 months now. Any company that can't ramp up production over a 13 month period doesn't deserve to be in business. Either that or they're very clever. Nintendo are the latter imho...

Your comment does sound very much like a "Wii Bash" post, it was not needed to make your point, however, I'll skip that part as it's off topic.

1) Most people I know bought it after playing it around some one else house and enjoying it or watching some of Nintendo's advertising showing people having a great time. Nintendo would sell even more consoles if it could get into more peoples homes quicker as it's kind of like a virus that spreads.

2) Nintendo has increased production 3 times,
800,000 to 1million
1million to 1.2 million
1.2 - 1.8 million

It takes roughly 5 months for Nintendo to increase production as they get parts from many different suppliers and if even one of these suppliers can not provide enough parts they can't increase production.

3) There is no "but all of a sudden" about the desire of people to own a Wii as it has been selling extremely well for the entire year even during the summer months which is traditionally a very slow period for game consoles.

During the summer months the Wii was in Stock - so why did it keep on doing such high sales numbers even when supply was greater then demand?

It is during these slow summer months when a Console is meant to stock pile for the insane Christmas period, but there wasn't enough excess stock, in the UK or World Wide to handle this much demand, so they kept some back during September - November period to provide some boost to the holiday period.

Sales for the wii in the UK have gone from ~23K to over 100K last week, they are not holding back stock now - indeed they have released a flood of wii's into the market, and yet it STILL isn't enough to meet demand.


(off topic: I bought the Wii at launch, pre-ordered from amazon, I heard of it during the time everyone thought it would fail but I liked the idea - it was very different from my Gaming PC, I am happy with it.)

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by Vengi

Your comment does sound very much like a "Wii Bash" post, it was not needed to make your point, however, I'll skip that part as it's off topic.

Read my post properly, it wasn't intended as a wii bash but to demonstrate a particular point. I can understand why people like the wii, it's just not for me....

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Read my post properly, it wasn't intended as a wii bash but to demonstrate a particular point. I can understand why people like the wii, it's just not for me....

Fair enough, but I would say the effect your describing it's more of a symptom of the shortages and only a very small minority are buying due to the "must buy what everyone else wants because it's hard to find!" mentality.

The huge demand at this time of year is because people are buying it for there kids (and each other) for Christmas - naturally.

The way it's been selling throughout the rest of the year and the decent software attach rate of the Wii implies that Nintendo's Advertising campaign & word of mouth has worked wonders for them, the lack of Wii's to sell at this time of the year is actually stopping the Wii from selling far more then it otherwise could.

Were they stupid for not ramping up supply even higher? Well not really, no one ever thought that the Wii would be selling faster then what the PS2 did in this point in it's life. They are now making 1.8 million a month which is pretty crazy as it is. Expect them to increase production even higher next year.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by Vengi

Were they stupid for not ramping up supply even higher? Well not really, no one ever thought that the Wii would be selling faster then what the PS2 did in this point in it's life.

It's a calculated decision imho...