Nintendo explains Wii Fit shortages using familiar language
By Nilay Patel 
posted August 28th 2008 7:27PM
posted August 28th 2008 7:27PM
Well, it looks like all that experience Nintendo has half-explaining Wii supply issues isn't going to waste -- the company just issued a statement regarding shortages of Wii Fit that sounds awfully familiar. Seriously, follow along with us here:- Wii shortages, Nov. 14, 2007: "The demand for Wii hardware globally has been unprecedented and higher than Nintendo could ever have anticipated."
- Wii Fit shortages, Aug. 28, 2008: "Nintendo had a substantial supply nationwide for launch, though some stores saw spot shortages due to unprecedented demand for this unique product."
[Via Slashgear]
Engadget would have made 1000 story per day about the wii fit really 'unprecedented' should it was Apple fit.
This place has gone on way too far to be readable
uhh..... yeah. far out, dude.
you know I see some people come on here and claim that Gizmodo is supreme to Engadget. And while I do read some stuff at Gizmodo, it's also slow. I've seen posts on Gizmodo that are two days behind posts from Engadget. See these:
Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/25/carbon-neutral-ziggurat-pyramid-could-house-1-1-million-in-dubai/
August 25th
Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5042794/city+in+a+pyramid-could-house-a-million-dubaians-power-itself
August 27th.
Just saying.
Also, it's basic economics. Keep a tight rein on supply and you keep people interested and gripped on getting hold of one of those ellusive products. If it's too easy to get, it probably isn't worth it - and I know that isn't at all true, but its the way that a lot of people subconciously think.
Low supply - even artificially so (De Beirs control of the diamond market, anyone?) means that they can keep sales coming in and prices at high.
If supply is high, they have a stock surplus and would probably have to drop prices to shift the units.
Lets be honest, would we still be talking about the Wii Fit if it wasn't a right bitch to get a hold of?
Carl M and Pingmeister are also right.
oh well played engadget comment system, you pwned me this time........
pwn me once, shame on you,
pwn me twice, your probable a broken comment system created for netscape 4
Surprisingly, I actually saw maybe 5 or 6 Wii Fits stocked on a shelf in electronics/games at a Toys R Us here in Jersey this past weekend. I had never actually seen the thing in stock anywhere, including when I bought mine (pre-ordered online).
As for its effectiveness in weight loss? Well, shoot, maybe I should have gone viral with the whole Wii Fit challenge thing. Since mid-July, I've been doing Wii Fit nearly every day (except scattered weekends and one week when I went out of town and was without my Wii) and coupled with watching what I'm eating by counting calories and all that, I've lost 16 lbs so far. For the past week, in fact, I've stuck with doing 30 jackknife exercises and 20 minutes of jogging every day (up to about 3.2 miles in that 20 minutes). Maybe it's more the "eating better" than it is the exercise on Wii Fit, but I feel BETTER when I exercise.
This morning, for instance...I woke up and I was dead on my feet. Totally exhausted, no idea why, since I definitely got enough sleep. Groggily grabbed a bottle of water, turned on Wii Fit and started up jogging. Within a couple minutes, I was wide awake and felt so much better. So if anything, Wii Fit is at least helping to contribute to a more healthy lifestyle for me.
Initially when I got Wii Fit at launch, I was definitely one of those people who used it a few times...then stopped...then started again...then stopped. Now that I've actually made a commitment to it, it feels like the purchase was really worthwhile. However, I can understand if perhaps Nintendo is reluctant to go crazy on production because of all those people that would start...then stop and then, worse yet, sell off the thing on eBay. Sure, Nintendo gets the initial sale...but any new sales then go to eBay, over and over. And I totally get that not everyone's gone gung-ho on Wii Fit like I have.
That turned into a bit of rambling, didn't it? I think I made some okay points about Wii Fit there, though. Right?
your actually one of the few that understand that, yes, healthy eating can help you lose weight and ,yes, exercising can help you lose weight. not many know that its really the combination of the two that give the greatest result. kudos to you and using this thing for how nintendo probably wanted it to be used.
I was lucky and on Tuesday I found two wii Fits at a gamestop, bought both of them.
People says that nintendo didn't know how well it was going to go needs to shut up...I mean they made the wii...they know how many wii is out there and they can sort of estimate how many of those people will buy a controller. If they made the same mistake twice, they must be stupid. I wish someone would buy my wii...I haven't used it since the first week I got it.
totally man, people commenting on nintendo totally need to STFU.
-crickets-
yeah, see? empty blog now beotch.
"sort of estimate"?? Yeah, that's what Nintendo did. I love all the armchair analysts though. :p
Thats right...Wii! Represent!!
Dont hate on nintendo just cause they are ahead in sales.
Now if only there was a way to force consumers to buy products that are stuck on shelves.
We are in the midst of the biggest global economic slowdown in decades. Don't expect smart companies to produce excess stock. It nothing to do with propping up demand or creating a niche, its simply sound management.
I just got mine today after months of searching, I managed to find a used one for 90$ on craigslist, when the wii first came out I ran into one while out of town, in a small metro with a combined population of like 130,000. they had alot of them too, and meanwhile here in omaha they are still as rare as when they came out.. a year later.
I bet this is all a marketing tecnique that ensures they can stop productions when needed without having to have stock sitting on shelves. it iw a good way to do it, it dosent matter how long it takes a person to get ahold of one, the money will still roll in weather it's in a short time span or not.
I got mine yesterday though I wasn't really searching for it. It is DEFINITELY a marketing technique, and I hate them for that. Yeah, they're business smart. That doesn't mean you can't hate them for screwing with you (which is what they're doing all while laughing all the way to the bank). And it's not the fact that they artificially keep shortages that I am pissed about. It's the fact that they are smug AND lie about it. There's nothing I hate more than smug people who have the nerves to LIE in your face even when caught red-handed. Say "no comment" or say "we planned to make X units within Y months and executed that plan successfully" or "demand was calculated by a proprietary formula that we can't divulge". Just not "oh noes we were surprised by this unprecedented demand, we're so sorry dear consumers, we're doing our best to make more".
I blame the Wii Fit Girl.... LOL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v31qxrXsxv0
How about pre-order like I did dumb asses and you don't need to worry about it! Dumb asses was directed at nobody here, just the whining masses that cry about not having one of the coolest things since sliced bread because of lack of foresight;-)
Still not buying this demand outstripping supply bit anymore.
-Seeing units (Wii and WiiFit both) ON SHELVES (maybe not for long, but a substantial difference from not even making it into the store off the truck they were delivered on)
-Hearing many parents losing interest and giving up
-Hearing many 20-something aged gamers I know losing interest and giving up
-Carl M says it's not easy to ramp up production? OPEN FACTORIES. Oddly we hear about factories opening up all the time to make AMD chips or PS3's or 360 parts, but Nintendo, with all this profit they're getting from the get go, can't do the same? Something doesn't add up. If this thing is cheap to make and reuses components from their last console then they don't really have any legitimate excuse for not being able to open more production lines to please their customers.
You have to admit though. If a product is riding on hype and is hard to obtain, why ramp up production and risk disturbing the hype wave if you can keep riding it for a while longer while you're already profiting? Nintendo really doesn't have any real reason to open up new factories to make more Wii's if they know it could cause a change in consumer's eyes seeing plenty of a cheap console on shelves with graphics that look like around the same as the PS2's sitting at home. Ramp up production now and burst the bubble and see headlines declaring a GC scenario or ride the wave as long as possible?
In fact, I've read about Nintendo opening more factory capacity as well. How much more should they make?
I think they may be constrained by their parts suppliers presently.
I'm gonna side with the LA Times that wrote an article 2 months ago saying the reason that we dont get many Wii Fits here is due to the value of the dollar and that Nintendo makes more $$$ sending the Fits to Europe then bringing them here...
The Wii fit's effectiveness as a weight loss tool is only as good as the person using it. If it's on and off for a while, and then off for good, like most exercise machines, then it's not going to do much good. The thing is, the Wii fit's got a few things on its side, which is that it can make exercise interesting, it's got variety, and it doesn't cost that much (if you already have a Wii, even if you don't it still doesn't cost much). However, with the shortage, you'd be lucky to find one.
Nintendo has made an incredible amount of profit (as in: unprecedented, humungous, unheard of) from its gaming business for the past few years. It could easily afford to lose some of it by anticipating demand for once and meeting or exceeding it, instead of giving the same old excuses after the fact. Doing the same stupid thing twice, for the same system, is giving it a lot of bad press, and put a lot of people off Nintendo for good.
My Wii Fit board told me today that this was my 100th day with the Fit. Then it proceeded to tell me to stop eating fatty meats and only eat lean cuts. I told it to shut up and just get on with the program. Geez, nag, nag, nag.
My sister just got a Wii and she asked me "oh, can you pick up a Wii Fit for me?" Uh, sure, no problem.
No real shortage of Wii Fit in Europe. Weak $ and strong € might have something to do with who gets products first.
I even just found a mobile company in Germany that gives you a free Wii with a Fit for two phones on a contract.
The USA is typically the market that companies supply first and allow shortages elsewhere.
I think they could make all the product they want, this is a way to stay in the news and get people talking. I have to admit, I didn't get too excited about the 60GB PS3s until I couldn't get my hands on one, anywhere. Maybe Nintendo figured this out early. As I recall from back in the day, the NES was the best selling console of all time, and I waltzed right in to Target and bought one. Sad to think that was 25 years ago!
Hay the people on ebay (including me) are having a field day. :-)
You know what the problem with Nintendo and Supply is, its very simple.
Nintendo as a company has several things to worry about.
First is cost. They have a price range they want to fall in, and though it would be easy to go out and produce Wiis and Wii Fits at a rate demand would require the speculative cost in doing so would fall outside their budgetary range, remember out of the 3 current big consuls the Wii is the only one that turned a profit from day one. This is because Nintendo set a limit to how much they would spend and charge per system and they've stuck to that, but this means fewer component manufactures to go to and thus fewer avalible systems.
Second is supply. Nintendo has under estimated their supplies at every turn, this wasn't because of fear of losses, they knew the system would sell, all the hype guaranteed that. The problem they faced was determining how much to product, initially all they had to base their product on was pre-order demands, and they weren't able to meet that in some instances, then instead of ramping up the production, which would have cost them more, they based their production schedules on previous sales, the problem is demand has kept rising since launch as more and more people have "played around" with the system and found they want the thing. At one point for every Wii produced there were 10 customers who would buy it, it has come down since then but the system can still be difficult to find.
Third is controlled supply. Why would they want to control their supply? To put it simply E.T. There is a landfill filled with this game's Atari cartridge for a reasons, none of which apply to the Wii other than supply exceeding demand. At some point demand will drop and they don't want their supply over exceeding it, this costs them money producing systems that are just going to sit on the shelves, and if you look at nintendo's supplies over the years they have fairly accurately hit the mark for their needs once demand subsided. Even today you can over supply the market, Sony for months had an over supply of 20GB and 60GB PS3, the supply wasn't due to people not wanting the system though, it was because people didn't want to pay the price for a system which have few games but was extremely costly, it got to the point many retailers just stopped ordering PS3 consuls until they were almost sold out of them, and many still do this today with the system, stores also don't like having an over supply of product because at the end of the year it costs them money.
Forth diversified development. This isn't something Nintendo has had to deal with, ever. But now Nintendo is looking at offering up different configurations of the Wii. Why haven't we gotten them yet though? Because they aren't going to even consider it until they can catch up with demand, but they are considering it. Outside of different colors Nintendo has never had two of the same system with different configurations actively on the market at the same time since the SNES launched, they actively tried to keep the NES on the market but it didn't work, since then they have had a 6-8 month cross over with systems and then they're off the market. Sony was the same way until the PS3. Microsoft and Sony has proven that there is a demand for different configurations of systems depending on the budgetary concerns and needs of the customer, and Nintendo would like to take advantage of this fact, but they don't want to flood the market with so many Wiis that customers who might be interested in a Wii with native DVD playback and expanded on board storage have already gotten one and can easily get one, most consumers don't repurchase consuls until they have to, keep the supply at a controled rate until you see that the systems they're building and in stock are going up and the demand for those systems are stable or going down, this gives them a chance to introduce new products to the market without hurting the current supply demands when they cut back on the production of the previous models.
@3dpenguin
how much time do you have to type all that?
I have given up on trying to find the Wii fit. I now use my daughter's
DDR (dance dance revolution) and the workout mode on there and
a few pilates off of on demand Comcast. Come on over and play the Wii,
the kids hardly use it. We're outside playing at parks and now they're in
playing Monopoly.
I've never seen Wii Fit in any store, it's always sold out.