In light of the recent weeks' shipments and availability of the Nintendo Wii, I've started thinking about the timeframe in which the Wii system will be become available enough that one can walk into a store and get one without camping. Wiis seem to be resupplying on a roughly 2-3 week timeframe, and at the current rate, it seems likely to me that they won't be widely available until May or June of this year. Right now retail stores seem to be getting anywhere from 15 to 50+ Wiis per store, which roughly amounts to an average of 75 to 300+ per city per shipment week, depending on how many retail stores they have. Wii Accessories are sold out everywhere (seriously, I haven't see a nunchuck or a Wii Remote sitting on any store shelves in weeks), but the entire lineup of games can be found at most stores, which leads me to one conclusion: plenty of games, but not enough systems/accessories -- which means demand is still pretty high for the Wii console.
Also, Nintendo DS Lites are still in short supply following Christmas, (I haven't seen any of these in stock for the last month and a half). Everyone is saying that next week will be another Wii weekend, where the big 5 (Circuit City, Fry's. Best Buy, Target, and Gamestop/EB) will be stocking up on Wiis again. My logic is as follows: if they are doing sales of Wiis every three weeks -- and they're only getting about 50 units per store, it's going to be a long time before demand is filled and the Wii shortage is beginning to feel an awful lot like the Nintendo DS shortage in Japan, where even 6 months after the release of the DS Lite, one was still required to camp for one.
In time, supply will meet demand, but with stores holding onto them instead of releasing them, or forcing obscenely expensive bundles upon people, stores will be dragging this out for as long as they possibly can -- the Wii is one of those items that seems to be able to draw people into the store, which leads to more purchases within the store, even if the store only makes $12 per console sold, the cost of other items bought while in the store is enough to be significant.
With these factors in mind, I'm revising the Wii widescale availability timeframe to June/July from March. I maintain a "buy" rating on the Wii.
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