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Wii: Manchildren at War! (also: CROW DINNER)

Where I work if we get Wiis we usually sell them on Friday's. Last Thursday, when I got off work at 10pm, there was already like a dozen people waiting in line for them. This is a month after launch. That's pretty much all that needs to be said. It could be just like the 360 however where when supply finally ramps up and christmas is over, it's left unsold in stores. For now demand is high and people are rabid for the holidays.

In kind of a weird parallel, holiday shopping needs to die like E3 did this year. Saving up all this money to spend on one day of the year when everyone else is spending their money too, retarded. Just like saving up all the announcements and surprises for videogames in a three day period in May to have them buried by everything else.
 
I also find the ebay pattern interesting for the Wii. Last year the 360 peaked right at launch and then gradually declined to retail at about Xmas. Same with PS3 this year, apparently. On the other hand, Wii had that same peak before/at launch, had the same steady decline for awhile, but has rebounded to near peak prices (right now ~500 USD or so). The fact that it's tracking better on ebay than the other two 'ebay consoles' is interesting. Not sure what it means long term, but I doubt it's bad.
 
Danthrax said:
I approve of this thread. The Wii is impossible to find.

But it shouldn't have been that surprising -- it's a console launch, it was bound to sell out and it was bound to remain scarce through the holidays.

It only confirms how deeply the consensus that Wii was supposed to be Gamecube part 2
 
SailorDaravon said:
True story: I went into GS today about 90 minutes after they opened (only to take advantage of the buy 2 get 1 free sale). The manage said they'd had some wii's that morning, but there was a line (about 20 people) when they opened. Alternatively, they'd had 6 PS3s, and had not sold a single PS3, while everyone in line wanted only a wii. While I was there the first soccer mom came in to get one. Yesterday I was in Walmart, and they were paging over the intercom that they had PS3s. For about 40 minutes. Then my friend later that day who works in a Canadian Walmart said that they'd been paging that they had them for an hour and a half, and none had sold.

What the hell is going on here??

$599
 
alkaline black said:
I expected to see a crazy Nintendo Manchild story on "To Catch a Predator", but never on CNN.

Way to shoot for the moon, guys.

:lol

"Here, I'll read it to you. 'SmoothMoves72', that's you, writes 'I want you to hold my 'blank' carefully, do you want me to bring a wrist strap for it? Don't worry, I promise it won't break.' Now, you know this girl was 15 when you wrote that, didn't you? Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

purnoman3000 said:
In kind of a weird parallel, holiday shopping needs to die like E3 did this year. Saving up all this money to spend on one day of the year when everyone else is spending their money too, retarded. Just like saving up all the announcements and surprises for videogames in a three day period in May to have them buried by everything else.

:lol

Cancel Christmas? Sounds easy enough. Doesn't that just mean there'll be lots of smaller independent versions of Christmas throughout the year without all the hoopla instead of the one big one in LA?
 
Wii has had a suprisingly good start; although its about as good as the E3 reception to it this year would indicate.

Still, it's got a long slog ahead of it; as impressive as reports of it are right now, will it be able to maintain its cachet as the fun thing for 5 years to come?

Right now in terms of games, Zelda and Wii sports are holding it up; with those two, the Wii is both the brand new exciting experience and the console that sports the 'best game ever'.

But after this christmas, the real test begins; will we see a good range of great software that'll have high appeal to both casuals and hardcores? Will the third parties be able to understand the philosophy of the Wii and embrace it?

The Wii unlike the DS doesn't have a standard control scheme to fall back on; well, it has the most basic control scheme, but otherwise, it's primarily what it is; a 3D pointer and analogstick (nunchuck).

Is the base hardcore crowd going to find that acceptable? Is that going to be enough for developers that make games for the traditional gaming set?
 
Pellham said:

You know, even I got shit about buying one at work when everyone there makes enough to buy one themselves. Maybe this price is a bigger albatross than expected.
 
BenjaminBirdie said:
:lol

"Here, I'll read it to you. 'SmoothMoves72', that's you, writes 'I want you to hold my 'blank' carefully, do you want me to bring a wrist strap for it? Don't worry, I promise it won't break.' Now, you know this girl was 15 when you wrote that, didn't you? Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
FamilyGuyFan84: So Chad, let's chill and play GameCube. Btw, Bro, I always take my pants off to play GameCube, so I hope that's cool.
 
_leech_ said:
Relaunch? Did i miss something?

Every major store had stock today.

And everyone knew about it.


I figured a month after launch the people who like the line up would have done so already.

But I forgot the parent factor :(
 
Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
I can agree to that. Many thought it would bomb straight off. Instead it has had a regular successful launch like every other system. However, the spin that it is somehow the next Ipod here on the forum is pure fanboy behavior.

Regular? Here in Quebec it's completely crazy. There is still people camping out in front of stores regularly.
Maybe in the states they have received more stocks??
 
Zaptruder said:
Wii has had a suprisingly good start; although its about as good as the E3 reception to it this year would indicate.

Still, it's got a long slog ahead of it; as impressive as reports of it are right now, will it be able to maintain its cachet as the fun thing for 5 years to come?

Right now in terms of games, Zelda and Wii sports are holding it up; with those two, the Wii is both the brand new exciting experience and the console that sports the 'best game ever'.

But after this christmas, the real test begins; will we see a good range of great software that'll have high appeal to both casuals and hardcores? Will the third parties be able to understand the philosophy of the Wii and embrace it?

The Wii unlike the DS doesn't have a standard control scheme to fall back on; well, it has the most basic control scheme, but otherwise, it's primarily what it is; a 3D pointer and analogstick (nunchuck).

ALERT semicolon abuse ALERT
 
Meta-Knight said:
Regular? Here in Quebec it's completely crazy. There is still people camping out in front of stores regularly.
Maybe in the states they have received more stocks??

No, it's definitely the Go-To gift of the season. I think the disbelief is in whether or not it can sustain this for the lifetime of the console.

Personally? I'm betting yes. I think it's just a little difficult for the hardcore gamer to imagine the existence of the rarely mined demographic that this machine is now and will be appealing to. Really the only hurdle it had against it was the acceptance of its controls, and it has clearly overcome those.

As far as worries about games and third party support, if I close my eyes and remember back, the Atari had like, what, ten games when it came out? Did it even have that many? Many of the people buying this machine will be happy just to play Bowling or Boxing with their friends. Only hardcore games are really concerned with steady releases of high quality games because they're the ones who keep buying several games a month. Your casual gamer buys several games a year.

The Wii, like the DS before it, is going to surprise a lot of people. Personally, I think it's good news for everyone. Developers are going to need a steady and cheap source of income if they want to keep making wildly expensive games for a much smaller market. Wii and DS games are going to be catering to a wider install base and will be much cheaper to make.

I think Nintendo's rise to prominence is just what the industry needs.
 
Agent Icebeezy said:
You know, even I got shit about buying one at work when everyone there makes enough to buy one themselves. Maybe this price is a bigger albatross than expected.

They may understand the value of money, but they don't understand the value of spending it.
 
gkrykewy said:
I also find the ebay pattern interesting for the Wii. Last year the 360 peaked right at launch and then gradually declined to retail at about Xmas. Same with PS3 this year, apparently. On the other hand, Wii had that same peak before/at launch, had the same steady decline for awhile, but has rebounded to near peak prices (right now ~500 USD or so). The fact that it's tracking better on ebay than the other two 'ebay consoles' is interesting. Not sure what it means long term, but I doubt it's bad.


This is really all the proof that's needed to show that the Wii is a bigger hit than the PS3, at least for the moment (as well as the 360 at last year's launch). By all accounts there are more Wii's than Ps3s on the market (and 360's last year) at yet the price has barely dipped in a month on eBay.

It really is shocking.

On the other hand, I really don't think Nintendo is going to get close to the 2 millions Wii's in NA by the end of the year. The numbers that Best Buy and other stores have been getting seem fairly low. Plus there was that retraction in Nintendo's press release a while back about how many consoles they'd have.

It makes me wonder if Nintendo had to go back and repackage a whole lot of the Wii's that were ready to ship with the new straps. That could really cut in to their ability to ship enough to the market.
 
Andonuts said:
nintendo is outselling sony, white is black, up is down, wet is dry, etc

Venkman%203.jpg


"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria."
 
So glad I invested 26 hours to launch day. felt damn good being 1st in line and like the CNN lady Had police escort due to a prior violent encounter during the PS3 launch 2 days earlier. Walmart was taking no chance of repeat situations
 
daegan said:


:lol :lol :lol

Those are classic! Fanboys are dumb.
 
vasuba said:
So glad I invested 26 hours to launch day. felt damn good being 1st in line and like the CNN lady Had police escort due to a prior violent encounter during the PS3 launch 2 days earlier. Walmart was taking no chance of repeat situations

So glad I preordered, bundle-free, from Amazon back in August.
 
So, to sum things up:

Sony/Microsoft miss shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Botched launch.

Nintendo misses shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Flawless victoly!
 
Rhindle said:
So, to spin things up:

Sony/Microsoft miss shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Botched launch.

Nintendo misses shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Flawless victoly!
fixed.
 
Rhindle said:
So, to sum things up:

Sony/Microsoft miss shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Botched launch.

Nintendo misses shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Flawless victoly!

:lol
 
Rhindle said:
So, to sum things up:

Sony/Microsoft miss shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Botched launch.

Nintendo misses shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Flawless victoly!
How many units have been made available for each console so far?
 
Martoo said:
Dogs and cats, living together.
Andonuts said:
nintendo is outselling sony, white is black, up is down, wet is dry, etc
Danthrax said:
Venkman%203.jpg


"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria."
Danthrax, you were beaten! On page 1, no less.

just watched that movie last night. so awesome.

Man, I'm glad my native penny-pinching scrooge side of me is keeping me from wanting a Wii. I can put off all this insanity for wuite a while. Maybe until a price drop!
nah, I doubt I can wait 2 years...
 
Rhindle said:
So, to sum things up:

Sony/Microsoft miss shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Botched launch.

Nintendo misses shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Flawless victoly!
I seriously hope you're joking.... cuz there is a major difference between missing shipment projections and creating a massive dearth.
 
Rhindle said:
So, to sum things up:

Sony/Microsoft miss shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Botched launch.

Nintendo misses shipping projections leading to massive shortages = Flawless victoly!

You must have missed the part where media coverage of Wii = true and media coverage of PS3 = false. Or the part where Wii eBay prices have remained near launch levels while PS3 has declined similarly to the way 360's eBay prices declined.
 
Terrell said:
I seriously hope you're joking.... cuz there is a major difference between missing shipment projections and creating a massive dearth.

just like there is a major difference between making enough of legitimate next-gen systems and making enough Gamecube Turbos.
 
Markster said:
Danthrax, you were beaten! On page 1, no less.

I was?? [checks]

Oh hell, I didn't notice that post. I feel like I'm wearing flares to an 80s party, or using "Show me the money!" in a conversation. Or something.

At least I went to the effort of finding a picture of Venkman. =P
 
Amir0x said:
just like there is a major difference between making enough of legitimate next-gen systems and making enough Gamecube Turbos.
And a difference between a paper launch and a genuine worldwide release within a one month timeframe.
 
Terrell said:
And a difference between a paper launch and a genuine worldwide release within a one month timeframe.

people throw that term around a LOT, but I bet most of the peeps that use it just read it somewhere and don't even know what it means. :lol
 
You will be able to walk in and get the system at launch day. Guaranteed.
i did just that on launch day here in Australia. No preorder or anything.

Amir0x said:
just like there is a major difference between making enough of legitimate next-gen systems and making enough Gamecube Turbos.
that just means nintendo did a better job of matching consumer expectations with consumer demand and their ability to fill that demand.
 
Terrell said:
I seriously hope you're joking.... cuz there is a major difference between missing shipment projections and creating a massive dearth.
Yup, there's a massive dearth of Wiis, while ebay prices indicate that Sony has managed to satisfy PS3 demand.
 
xaosslug said:
people throw that term around a LOT, but I bet most of the peeps that use it just read it somewhere and don't even know what it means. :lol
It means they did it as a "me too" measure in spite of not having the availability, thus they spend their time advertising a product and its superiority to other competitors while not having enough availability to actually sell to even a whole-number percentile of the audience they're advertising to.
Thanks for playing.
 
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