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GameStop Expecting Greater Wii Stock This Holiday

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

September 19, 2008

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“Our look from Nintendo is that it will be much, much better than it has been the last two years”

Bob McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising at GameStop, has said that he expects the company to be able to satisfy most consumers looking to buy a Wii this Christmas.

While he acknowledged that stock might not be available every day this holiday season, he said that the current flow of Wii units being supplied by Nintendo had left him confident of meeting the majority of consumer demand.

“It’s been a unique ride for Nintendo to have the Wii going into a third year this November where the consumer may still be searching for it,” McKenzie told MTV Multiplayer.

“Our look from Nintendo, though, is that it will be much, much better than it has been the last two years. I can’t say we will be in stock every day throughout the holiday season but I can tell you that the current flow we’ve seen coming from Nintendo on Wii hardware makes us very confident that we will meet the business model that we’ve got.”

Earlier this month at the retailer’s expo in Las Vegas, GameStop’s vice president of merchandise and marketing Tony Bartel told us that the company is anticipating “demand for the Wii will continue through the holiday season”.

“The company is naturally still expecting great things from Wii sell-through rates,” he said. “We still don’t know where the bottom is for the Wii because we can’t keep it on the shelves.”

lifeat30fps's picture
On September 20th lifeat30fps said:

With the value of the dollar in the gutter, it was easier for Nintendo to make money selling systems to the rest of the world. Now they are finally ready to try selling games to the Americans, but will it be too late since there are few games for serious gamers due in the immediate future?

Brian
www.brianwoods.com

4thVariety's picture
On September 19th 4thVariety said:

This whole Wii shortage struck me as fake since its beginning. A sort of attempt at virally marketing the thing. Make it appeal more by not making it available and aim for the impulse purchase. As far as Europe is concerned, there are stacks of 20+ Wii in every store at ever time, since day 1.

Now that MS is applying price pressure, the strategy changes, who would have thought.

nathaniel.kent's picture
On September 23rd nathaniel.kent said:

Not true - it's pretty well-documented that Nintendo was genuinely surprised at the scale of the Wii's success and has had to invest massively in new production facilities to meet demand. It would be pretty moronic viral marketing to keep the console out of the hands of people who want to buy it, denying yourself income from console and game sales and disappointing your fans! "Make it appeal more by not making it available and aim for the impulse purchase" - that doesn't even make sense!

I know for a fact that here in the UK it was pretty much impossible to get hold of a Wii in the shops for a good 6 months (at least) after launch, give or take the odd moment when a shop would get them in stock and then see them quickly sell out. I had a lot of friends who wanted one and had to wait weeks for their orders to come through.

NickgamertagO1's picture
On September 19th NickgamertagO1 said:

For the most part here in the US, of all the retail stores I go into, they were NEVER in stock. There was the rare occasion I'd see them, but 99% of the time they weren't stocked. Well, over the last month I've been seeing them on shelves, and not just in the morning, I've seen them 15 minutes from closing at best buy, I was at Target around 9pm this weekend and they had at least 3 Wiis just sitting there. I took a picture of it with my phone for proof, but I haven't transfered it to my computer yet. I think maybe the Wii is cooling off a bit. I'm sure it'll still sell out during the Holiday though.