Good old Michael Patcher, or M. Patch to those who have him in their Fantasy Analyst League, talked about the future of retailer GameStop and how they will fare during this economic recession. He shot out his rationale for why there has been a Wii shortage, nearly a year and a half into the life of the console.
M. Patch claims the Wii shortage is due to the weak dollar and places like Europe, with stronger currency at the moment, are "totally stealing our shipments," … ok, that’s not an exact quote. I made it up, but that’s the general idea. Nintendo makes more money selling their system where the conversion rate to the Yen is higher so shipping more boxes to those countries intern makes Nintendo more mullah.
He went on to say that once the demand in Europe levels off, which should be soon, shipments to the United States should pick up. He places a timeframe for that to start later this year.
I never understood this whole ‘Wii shortage’ claim. I’ve got a pretty solid in at my local GameStop and they tell me that they see just as many, sometimes more, Wii consoles come through the door in a given month than Xbox 360s and PS3s. The only difference between the two is a shipment of Xboxs lasts about three weeks, while a shipment of Wii is gone that day.
Can getting as many units as your competitor onto store shelves be labeled a shortage? I call it a demand increase rather than a console shortage. We should really be blaming all the old folks and non-gamers rolling up on retail stores and purchasing game systems.
Have you ever seen a crazed grandma? Old people get up at like 5AM. They can hit every retail store before in the county lunch. They say they’re just buying them for their ‘grandchildren’ but we both know once they get those consoles home they rip the boxes open for some fierce Excite Truck action and the Agatha Christie game.
