Nintendo's Wii Rainchecks Mean You Get the Console Plus the Agonizing Wait [Nintendo]
Nintendo's Wii Rainchecks Mean You Get the Console Plus the Agonizing Wait — Kotaku's Brian Crecente is liveblogging a chat with Nintendo US honcho Reggie Fils-Aime, where the first order of business …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Wii's second holiday season is replaying its first: the New York Times found the same long lines this December that greeted the 2006 launch, and Nintendo itself warned of Wii shortages last month as high-street retailers said they could not stock enough units for Christmas. Demand has been so lopsided that within weeks of launch buyers were trading PS3s for Wiis.
The response, announced by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime in a liveblogged Kotaku chat, is a raincheck program: customers can reserve a console now and take delivery later. It converts an empty shelf into a committed sale — but only by asking buyers to accept the wait.
First-order effects
- Shoppers who would have walked out of a sold-out store can now lock in a Wii purchase before Christmas, trading immediate gratification for a guaranteed unit.
- Retailers gain a demand-management tool for the shortage Nintendo flagged in November, capturing orders they would otherwise lose to empty shelves.
Second-order effects
- A formal reservation channel undercuts the secondary market that has thrived on Wii scarcity since the 2006 launch, when consoles commanded trades against rival hardware.
- Rivals watching a year-one console outsell supply into a second holiday season face pressure to treat manufacturing allocation as a competitive weapon, not just a logistics problem.
Third-order effects
- If shortages persist through year two, console launches normalize around allocation-and-reservation retail — scarcity itself becoming part of a hit product's cycle rather than a failure of it.
- Sustained unmet demand hands Nintendo a strategic dilemma: every unsold unit is revenue forgone, but the shortage keeps the Wii culturally dominant through its most important selling seasons.
The trend: Hit-console launches are settling into a pattern where post-launch scarcity spans multiple holiday seasons, forcing manufacturers to invent reservation mechanisms instead of fixing supply.