Fils-Aime Says Wii Shortage a 'Missed Opportunity'
File-Aime reiterated that the demand was not artificially created by an intentional shortage of consoles. "There is no secret plan to store Wiis in a warehouse to spur demand. The company, after all, is trying to reach out to women and to 40- and 50-year-olds who aren't avid gamers," Fils-Aime said. "They aren't going to sleep outside of a store overnight or visit a retailer five or six times."
Earlier this week, Fils-Aime said the company was "disappointed" by its low estimates of demand for the system, saying "A shortage benefits no one." The president first admitted the supply of holiday consoles wouldn't meet consumer demand in October, when he said the company's estimates rather than production capabilities were the problem.
"The issue is not a lack of production. The issue is we went in with a curve that was aggressive, but the demand has been substantially more than that," he said.
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Yes, you do PR by covering up your feeble attempts at creating artificial demand via the whole 'we under-estimated demand' line of BS. No one's saying that they have a warehouse full of Wiis just sitting there but it'd be easy to just not make as many as you know would satiate the interest in order to keep the aforementioned interest at a very high level. Perceived demand is a fantastic sales trick.
I'm really torn. It's seems ludicrous that they'd not want to have enough to meet demand but what other conclusion can you come to? It's not like there are desperate shortages of ANY of the components within the system (it's hardly state-of-the-art after all) so claiming that a modern, huge company with the marketing resources and intelligence of Nintendo somehow under-estimated demand smells mighty fishy to a lot of gamers.
Either way, I sincerely hope that any Shackers out to nab one this holiday season are able to find one.-
How can people possibly think this? What need would they have to create "artificial demand"? It just blows my mind that people genuinely think such an idiotic tactic would actually be employed. Like he says, if people can't find the thing, eventually they'll give up. They already sell more machines than either of their competitors, what would be the point of the insane thing you're saying they're doing?
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Why do you respond to the primal idiocy contained outside latestchatty
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I don't know. Conspiracy theory is fun I guess. I'd suggest perceived value is what sells shit. There's no demand for a worthless product no matter how scarce you make it. If that worked, Sony should just produce even less PS3s? ¯\(o_º)/¯
Don't console makers aim to make their money long-term from software sales anyway? That makes the idea of intentionally scarce hardware even more unbelievable. -
I have no idea if that is happening here, but creating high demand works for some products. Typically these aren't products everyone needs (like milk or bread), but rather products where perceived value (be it for entertainment need or status) helps sell the products.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_shortage
I remember from college that there have been quite a few successful campaigns by big name companies like Mercedes and those christmas Elmo dolls.-
Well, two things:
1) Tickle Me Elmo dolls and Cabbage Patch Kids do use False Shortage but only for short periods of time, and those are products with no long term goals (i.e., not trying to gain Tickle Me Elmo market share).
2) Nintendo makes their real money by selling games and accessories. A fake shortage is not in their best interests-
Not to be too conciliatory, but both of those products were around for years. Cabbage Patch Kids dominated market share of toys and a collectors market for years and years. Elmo dolls were around for years, as well.
And, if a fake shortage creates a buzz of interest that leads to more sales than otherwise would have been gained with no shortage, then it would be in their best interest. That said, I don't know that that is what is being done here.
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