Nintendo: Replenishing Wii supply will be a 'challenge'

Wow, there are STILL Wii shortages?
I find it hard to believe that.

So uhhhh...something tells me they are found to make MILLIONS of their next console kist to avoid this onlyto have the rude awakening that the casual gamers have no need for the "new new"

its not bullshit surprisingly, my uncle had a hard time finding a wii at bestbuys, walmarts and gamestops until he found one at a BJ's.

I've tried to write a cool, insightful comment for the past 2 minutes now, and I literally can't come up with anything.

I don't care anymore.

I'm no business man, but isn't there some sort of thing called supply and demand where the public demands something and the corporations provide it? Or is that something only America does?

I'm confused.

I live in a smaller town of about 35k people and our local K-Mart, Mejiers, Best Buy, Gamestop and Target have more than 10 in stock currently and none of them said they had any problems meeting any of this "huge holiday demand". Infact in our local paper you can find many Wii's for sale with the common statement from the sellers that "like new and our family no longer plays it" tagline. Just last week at one of the Gamestops I overheard a customer wanting to know the trade value of a Wii with Wii Fit so he could trade up to one of the other systems. Now Nintendo is good at milking products and making money so they can see that the gravy train on the Wii is slowing down so they limited the amount of units to be produced. Analysts are nothing more than people who "guess" what something will do, they don't really know, I was an Analyst for 10 years and all you can do is guess no matter what they may say with their education. When Sony and MS hit with their motion controls this Fall, Nintendo knows that they will have more competion so they are preparing. What Nintendo better do is come clean with everyone and give the customers and updated system with HD and something no one else has or next generation may be a N64/Gamecube generation. I love my DS but I don't own a Wii and don't care to or play a system with 6 year old graphics on my 55" HDTV.

But the question is: What will happen when everyone in the world owns a Wii?

They were short-sighted when Wii sales went down last year, and acted too hastily, and now they have to face the consequences: this, and the fact that they're making $50 less per Wii than they could have if they had stayed solid.

Nintendo scaled back production last fall because of slow sales (when many so called anaylsts were saying the Wii is dying) but then the Wii sold more than 3.8 million in Dec. beating the PS2's record sales of 2.7 million. So of course there are going to be shortages in various places. Amazon looks to be out of Wiis last time I checked. I think supply and demand will balance out in the next few months.

The shortage is obviously because the hardware in the Wii is so cutting-edge, what with the multi-core processor, the hard drive, the HD video output, and digital audio capabilities. Oh wait...

its a challenge because everybody already has one.

Pretty much what massmass said. It's eye-rollingly embarrassing when people think companies do this stuff on purpose. Having your product be "in demand" doesn't mean anything to a company if they aren't friggin' SELLING IT.
Unlike our fanboy mindsets, Nintendo doesn't see this as some sort of pecker waving PR war. PR doesn't make money and having their product be out of stock for what will amount to nearly an entire quarter DOESN'T look good in your financial reports.

In manufacturing, it's a lot easier to slow production than it is to ramp it back up again. For whatever reason, Nintendo saw fit to slow Wii production at some point around the middle or so of 2009 (probably because the Wii had been slumping for a while). If you slow manufacturing down like that, that means your suppliers slow down, too. It's comparatively easy to do, though... just give the suppliers of the individual parts the order to slow down and not ship as much.
If you want to speed it back up, it's harder to do. Suddenly you have to tell you suppliers that they need more, which means THEY potentially need to add more lines (back) to their production or any number of things.


So it's not that they're "incompetent". They're just EXTREMELY conservative. It keeps biting them in the ass, but they don't have much of a choice in the matter. They don't have anything else to fall back on like Sony and MS do; it's safe to say that they don't want to find themselves in another situation like they did with the Gamecube where they had a huge glut of supply a few years in because they over produced units and then eventually had to sell them at rock bottom prices.

"It's a common strategy. Create an artificial shortage of product to drive up demand, play up the shortage in the press and everyone will take notice thinking that the shortage is due to awesome sales and think they have to get one or be left out. They did it with cabage patch Kids in the 80's and nintendo has been doing it with consoles for years."

Actually.... Creating a shortage (i.e. keeping supply low) does not affect a change in demand. It simply keeps the price high. Profit per console was $92 according to Kotaku before the price cut. And, as predicted by the shape of a supply curve, as the price cut occurred, Nintendo reduced production. Surely Nintendo could have sold more if it produced more... because that upped production would put downward pressure on the price. Albeit that would not have been a PROFIT maximizing strategy.

I work in the EMS/OEM electronics business and there are parts and equipment shortages across the board. During the height of last years recession all the parts manufacturers (e.g. resistors, Ic's, memory flash, etc) and even the material manufacturers (i.e. copper, plastic, etc.) slowed their production way the fvck down. They laid off shifts and even moth balled some factories.
Now that demand is picking up all over the electronics world everyone is having a hard time buying parts. Lead times are going up for everyone. It takes a lot longer to increase production.

This shortage is 4 real ive been looking for one all week and no one has one or can tell me when they will have one.............kinda making me not want one anymore

Wii is very nice , its right sometimes the problem came of trolling otherwise its no more bad