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NoA: Wii U price response is "phenomenal". More consoles at launch than Wii

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Michan

Member
To give an impression that it is an extremely hot item. That way, it creates that demand that spreads out for many months. It's the law of supply and demand, as any Marketing student would know. As supply goes down, demand goes up. As supply goes up, demand goes down. It's intentional.

Sorry to be that guy, but Supply and Demand is model you'll learn in Economics, not Marketing.
 

JDSN

Banned
The low supply=millions of copies sold meme has reache its zenith of idiocy, even developers are caught in the carnival of stupid:

Brian Fargo ‏@BrianFargo
Seems like every console launch consists of underselling the launch and then reporting massive sell outs.
 

Tim-E

Member
Shortage = Manufactured to make people seem interested when obviously they can't be because LOLtendo

Shipping more to stores than previous console, which suffered massive extended shortages = Making excuses for consoles on shelves, since obviously nobody wants to buy them

Nintendo can't win here.

Exactly. Nintendo threads on this forum are so predictable.
 

omonimo

Banned
Pre-orders are sold out.

Lol right. I mean why Nintendo continues to claim pre-orders like a sure win now? Is that worried? Pre-orders can give some address but not count anything when we want concrete numbers of sold... it's too early.
 

Michan

Member
Shortage = Manufactured to make people seem interested when obviously they can't be because LOLtendo

Shipping more to stores than previous console, which suffered massive extended shortages = Making excuses for consoles on shelves, since obviously nobody wants to buy them

Nintendo can't win here.

They can win, if they can predict their own market and audience correctly (as many people within the company are paid a lot of money to do). They have all the intel. External factors and disorganisation/humiliating errors aside, they should be able to supply just enough units to meet demand. It's not like Nintendo hasn't launched a similar product before.
 
Wasn't Nintendo forcing EBay to crack down on scalpers? Something like you couldn't list the system for the first few weeks or something

Considering there is nothing illegal about reselling a Nintendo product, and the fact that eBay gets something absurd like 15% of the final sale price (and even more if PayPal is the payment method), I doubt it.
 

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
Lol right. I mean why Nintendo continues to claim pre-orders like a sure win now? Is that worried? Pre-orders can give some address but not count anything when we want concrete numbers of sold... it's too early.

well of course, since the thing hasn't been released yet
 
Exactly. For it to be intentional would imply that Nintendo knew what they were doing. I doubt they had that much foresight.

This is the same company that invented a robot named Gyromite to 'trick' toy stores into carrying the NES as a 'toy' after the crash of 83'

...So forgive us skeptical ones.
 
Considering there is nothing illegal about reselling a Nintendo product, and the fact that eBay gets something absurd like 15% of the final sale price (and even more if PayPal is the payment method), I doubt it.
Nvm, I just found the original thread and it was just a rumor that a guy shared about internal talk of possibly blocking U sales
 

Eric C

Member
Posting the graph for the people that won't click the link.

nNzYu.png
 

Busty

Banned
Hmmmm.

Talk is cheap........., the WiiU is not.

Getting the anecdotal evidence on WiiU sales here on GAF is going to be fascinating.
 

tkscz

Member
Sadly, even if it does sell into the 5 millions by march, it still won't print money selling at a loss.
 

Orayn

Member
Lol right. I mean why Nintendo continues to claim pre-orders like a sure win now? Is that worried? Pre-orders can give some address but not count anything when we want concrete numbers of sold... it's too early.

Sales will be grossly out of step with pre orders because... 'Tendo?
 

vareon

Member
...Says someone who's never been in an economics class ever.

In economics you weigh the pros and cons of situations to decide what will make you more money. And what will make you more money? Temporary inflated demand while cutting into your profits (remember, for every unsold consold console, you are liking losing 1-2 game sales additionally up front, and likely several more over the life time of the console. The earlier hardware is adopted, the more sales for that hardware over it's lifetime)? Or making sure demand is met on the hardware so more software is sold?

The Wii was a happy accident... The controller promised a means for people who don't like to play games to finally have a system with physical activity they might enjoy. Wii U makes no promise and isn't likely to hit that gold mine again and Nintendo of ALL people knows this.

What you're thinking of is a MARKETING class, and marketing honestly doesn't give a f*** about economics because it's all about fantasy. Drumming up interest in demand where there isn't really a need for either.

I'm starting to think that people who think "Cutting supply to increase demands! I see your tactics Nintendo HA!" are people who learned economy in high school or just had a very bad teacher. No sane marketing department will do this.

A likelier situation with the Wii situation is there WAS a shortage at some point and Nintendo's PR did their job of translating this into a "demand is really high!" message.
 

T Ghost

Member
To you guys discussing economics: marginal cost in a price-taking or fixed-price scenario is a curve that follows supply. This means that the firms costs go down as production ramps up, reach first break even point and keeps going down until it reaches the minimum point. From then on, if the firm keep increasing production MC starts to rise, reducing profits. In order to maximize profits a firm should stop increasing production at the lowest point of the MC curve. If at this point the demand is still larger than supply, the product was clearly underpriced. In the Wii case Nintendo failed to maximize profits by setting the initial price lower than it could have done before launch and not by not ramping up production after launch. So the shortage was actually caused by Nintendo's error at price setting (failing at predicting demand) and not by marketing strategy or as a strategy to increase demand.
 
The intentional Wii shortage thing was just people who were pissed that the Wii was selling well, couldn't control any logical thought and had to make up an excuse as to why people wanted it so badly. Nevermind the fact that any company would have been able to meet demand coming out of the Gamecube era where no one bought your systems.

It doesn't even make sense today to create a shortage when you have to get the system out as fast as possible so 3rd parties are confident to make games for your system .
 
I'm convinced that most wii u buyers are scalpers.

Agreed, I remember when the Gamecube and Xbox1 hit, and there was a lot of people thinking that there would be a big time shortage, and increased demand on Ebay...But there was none of it.

It's always tough to judge until it's too late...Will be interesting to see how this plays out on Sunday.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I considered deleting the no content garbage posts in the thread to salvage it, but the signal to noise ratio is too low. To be extra clear, this isn't being locked because of the subject matter or OT, but rather the course the thread has taken. We can do better.
 
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