Wii, DS, all out of stock!
A few weeks ago, I picked up a Wii from Toys ‘R Us in New York City. It was a very hot item at the time and no matter how many they sold, they kept trucking shipments in. A week or two later, I went to get a unit for a few friends but I was limited to a single unit. Bummer for my #2 and #3 friends.
Now, I went back yesterday to pick up another one and they are currently experiencing an extended shortage. The shortage seems to be nationwide. On December 17 (Sunday) a new shipment is due to arrive and I expect the madness to continue.
On a side note, my wife tried to get my son a Nintendo DS yesterday. She went to four stores and all of them were sold out. It seems like Nintendo products are simply on fire.
This WSJ online article has a nice quote:
“It may be because the PS3 is so scarce, consumers have given up looking for one and are going after the Wii with a vengeance,” theorizes John Taylor, a videogames analyst at Arcadia Investments Inc., in Portland, Ore.
From my perspective, Nintendo is doing really, really well. One report says that the Wii is outselling the PS3 by a 2–to-1 ratio. The gamespot article talks about how both Sony and Microsoft lose money on each PS3 and 360 sale since the hardware is so complex, while Nintendo makes a profit on every hardware sale.
Nintendo expects to sell 6 million Wiis through March of next year, but analysts expect even better numbers. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities told GameSpot, "I keep hearing that they will crush the 6 million unit number (by something like 2 to 3 million). That would be good for everyone."
(Link)
Another interesting quote from the gamespot article is that development of a Wii game is intrinsically a less-expensive proposition than developing a game for the PS3 and XBox 360:
It's not just the price of the hardware that gives Nintendo an edge in the money game. Development costs for the Wii are expected to be a fraction of development costs for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
The reason for this, I assume, is that all of that high-definition fidelity requires designers to produce a lot more detailed artwork and spend a lot longer on “level design.” If they don’t the high-definition display will be wasted on blocky army men blowing up blurry aliens.
At some point, I think Nintendo will get into the high-definition game but I suspect not until HD is ubiquitous and a veritable commodity.