Where’s the Wii?

For various reasons, I have been on the search for a Wii to purchase as compensation for someone recently.

I have had no luck. Finding a Wii in Boston is still wicked hard. The Nintendo Wii was released November 19, 2006- well over a year ago. I feel that I could find one in suburbia were I armed with a car, and a few hours. However, in Boston the options are the Best Buy on Newbury Street, and Gamestop in the Prudential. Neither of which are taking reservations, rainchecks, or have any idea when they will be in stock. At this point they are nearly laughing at me when I come in the store.

I suppose I could find one on Craigslist, but this is something that I’m buying for someone else, so I’d prefer that it was new. Ordering on Amazon even is no good either, and they are all selling for high prices.

My only question is WTF? This has been out for over a year. There aren’t that many good games for it (the new Mario, Zelda and Metriod are pretty much it from my view), and they have shipped over 20 million of these things. That’s well in excess of a million a month. Where are they going to so quickly?

Honestly I think the problem in Boston is that there’s only 2-3 places that might sell them, and they don’t get in any more than other stores. By Bostonian living standards purchasing one is like going out to a nice dinner and drinks- it’s cheap. The games are cheap. I mean it’s cool, and I somewhat want one myself but damn… they go too fast. Even 6 months ago I was able to find them, but now they are nearly impossible. If I was in North Carolina I’d simply drive to all of the usual suspects (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, various Gamestops, etc…) and surely find one. However in Boston you’re simply screwed because it sounds like we get about 10 a week for a city of 5 million.

As an odd note, Amazon.com has a really weird policy on sales for them. They allow up to 3 Wiis to be sold per household. Maybe there’s some odd exceptions, but at this point, who needs three Wii systems? Seriously. Stop selling 3 per person so that they can run to Craigslist and mark them up. Sell people a single one!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 5:53 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.