Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Yes, we posted about this before, but as the giant boulder that is the holiday season ominously thunders towards us, we may as well say it again: GameStop will probably have some major Wii shortages in the near future.

Chief financial officer David Carlson admitted in a conference call that the hardware "may be well out of stock by the holiday season," echoing another executive's recent claim that the 'Stop's inventory would be empty by the first week of December. He added that both Wii Fit and Guitar Hero: World Tour were "in very, very short supply" and "out of stock in many cases" respectively.

Obviously, plenty of other places sell Wiis, but if a major name like GameStop is running out of the things, you can bet they won't be alone. Unless you want to end up like Johnny and Orlando up there, get your skates on.

Christmas: for those who celebrate it, a time of joy, happiness, togetherness, and rampant, ugly consumerism. Love it or hate it, you can't exactly ignore it, so let's talk some more about your plans for this season of "love and laughter and joy" (thanks, Cliff). Which Wii games do you plan to put on your list to Santa, and -- more importantly -- what will you be buying others?

Chris Kohler attended the launch event of some Warcraft game at a San Francisco branch of GameStop last night, and ended up discussing the state of Wii availability this holiday season with a company executive.

To the relief of parents up and down the land, the suit echoed GameStop's assurances from September, revealing that there should be enough Nin-Tend-O Magic Motion Boxes to go round until the first week of December. As Kohler points out, that date means GameStop has enough consoles to last beyond Black Friday, a small miracle. That's still not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than the last two years. Alas, the executive called Wii Fit a "different story"; maybe it's time to check out some alternatives.

So says Sega A&R man Darren Williams in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, who also described the console as "the kind of thing that families will play at Christmas, and probably won't play again throughout the remainder of the year."

Before we all fetch the pitchforks and start constructing crude Darren Williams effigies, perhaps it would do some good to calmly consider whether the man has a point. In this blogger's personal experience, a small number of families do only use the Wii sporadically, and Williams clearly isn't referring to Wii Fanboy staff or readers.

Whether these occasional players are such a bad thing is another debate entirely. One popular theory seems to be that newer gamers are less likely to invest in new Wii software, but we saw yesterday that the Wii's tie ratio is thoroughly healthy. What sayeth you?

Even as holiday seasons go, the previous two were pretty damn horrible if you were a parent trying to find a Wii for your offspring. You could spot a harried, stressed parent almost everywhere you turned on the high street, their wide, panicked eyes and expressions of fear and uncertainty giving them away in game emporiums up and down the land.

But it doesn't have to be the same this year! This year, lil' Timmy will be opening a fresh new Wii come Christmas Day -- as long as you buy early enough. And if not, at least now we have somebody to blame: EEDAR's director of analytical services Jesse Divnich. Writing on Gamasutra, Divnich suggests that falling prices on the Wii's gray market mean that supply and demand are now close to being equal. "Given the trend," reasons the analyst, "it is likely that supply will finally outpace demand before the holiday season."

Don't just rest on your laurels, however, for Divnich thinks that demand may outpace supply again during November and December. The best solution? Buy one now and hide it until the time for gift-giving has arrived.

Hide it well, though -- or at least, hide it better than this blogger's parents hid Virtua Racing during the Christmas 1994 season. I must have had a solid four weeks with that game before I was required to act surprised on Christmas Day morning.

Whether or not you've been able to find Wiis in stores as of late, the holiday season is a completely different beast. Even now, in July, company president Satoru Iwata can't promise that there will be enough Wiis stocked to meet demand this Christmastime. If Wiis are scarce, this will be the third holiday season in a row that people in the U.S. and UK have had difficulty locating the console.

Iwata promises that the company is doing everything in its power to avoid this situation, and is on schedule to develop 2.4 million units for 2008 by the end of the year.

We can imagine only that some other Nintendo stock (we're looking at you, Wii Fit) will be a nightmare to find this holiday season, too.

[Thanks, Thomas!]

Not that it wasn't a great year, don't get us wrong, but as far as new games go, the year is ending without a single new release available. This means that we're forced to look to any holiday gifts we may have received or, well, something far worse: no games at all. This is the last weekend of 2007, how are we supposed to end the year without any new games to play?

Enough about us, how will you be sending out 2007? What will you be playing? Any new Wii owners ecstatic to have their first weekend with their console?

Nintendo did some good things for popular online retailer Amazon.com this holiday season, as its Wii console sold at a rate of 17 consoles per second. Of course, this only pertains to when the console was actually available for purchase, which wasn't all that often. This all contributed to a very lucrative holiday season for the retailer, which experienced its strongest sales on December 10th. Then, it sold 5.4 million items, which comes to about 62.5 items per second.

It may not be the Wii version of Guitar Hero, but it's certainly something worth recognizing, regardless. Turns out, some savvy folk decided to sync a loose collection of colored Christmas lights to the colored fret buttons in Guitar Hero, allowing for quite the display. It reminds us of those other Christmas lights.

[Via Engadget]

We know there must be a few new Wii owners out there taking a break from their video game playing to research their Christmas console. While there are a number of routines you can practice to ensure your system's longevity, please remember to keep these three things in mind:

1. If you expose it to the light, you may hurt it
2. If you get it wet, it will multiply
3. Most important, no matter how much it begs, never, never let it eat after midnight

If none of this makes any sense to you, or if you just want to relive your 80s youth, peek past the break for a video explanation.

See also: Because you can never be too safe

Well Mr. Cat, we'd like to take some time to see how most are celebrating their Christmas. Is that okay with you? Great!

With the Wii so damn tough to hunt down still, we figured we'd ask how some of you lucky folk to receive one, as well as those of you who already own it, are utilizing it in your holiday celebration. Hit up the poll below and let us know!

For a lot of you out there, today is Christmas. It's a big holiday here in the United States, where Wii Fanboy HQ is located. Many strive for the Norman Rockwell holiday, with family and food and fun all around. As we spend much of our day with our families, we're going to take a more relaxing schedule today regarding the site, so you won't see the full onslaught of Wii news from us. So, check us out as much as you can today, but also give your family the attention they deserve.

From all of us here at Wii Fanboy, we wish you a happy and safe holiday. Thanks for reading and taking the time to be a part of the community we have tried to build here. We appreciate everything you bring to the site each and every day.

Nibris has released their long-awaited Sadness ... Christmas card. Proving that somebody does something relating to Sadness occasionally, Nibris sent this Sadness-themed Christmas card to GoNintendo. "Merry Christmas and Happy Sadness," it reads, as a grey thing leans on a giant ball ornament with the Sadness logo. At least we think that's what's happening -- there's either a 'noise' effect applied to the whole image or it's just a really easy Magic Eye picture.

If this was the game, it would be out now. Maybe Nibris should change their plan and release Sadness as a small collection of holiday greeting cards, instead of their overambitious plan to release a video game.

Ah, can you smell that? That's the sweet, sweet aroma of a thousand eBay scalpers' plans going up in smoke. Yep, it looks like the bubble has well and truly burst for those hoping to make fat profits from the Wii on eBay, at least here in the UK. Scottish tabloid The Daily Record reports that the consoles are now going for as little as £147 ($290) on the auction site, a full £33 below the retail price.

A heart-warming bit of news for sure, though those Brits who drove/caught the train/swam to France may be regretting their decision now.

[Via The Tanooki]

We're always happy to hear about someone getting in on the Wii experience for the first time. New adopters who might have been turned away from gaming at one point in the past or are in on the activity for the first time warm our heart, because it shows the impressive power of the console. But, what was that we said about hunting one down?

Columnist Mark Morford works for the the San Francisco Gate and recently did something he's never done before: got up at the crack of dawn to track down a Wii. He got in line at his local Best Buy to get a system and, sure enough, he got one. It wasn't just for him, but for his little sister. Such a selfless act can only make us appreciate the fellow more.

What was great about this particular story is that despite it being so close to Christmas, and the Wii's unavailability still, the line was full of friendly and calm people. There wasn't any of the crazy Black Friday stampeding or selfish shoving in line, but people who had come to experience something wonderful. Playing is believing, sure, but these stories make us believe in something else: humanity.

Have any of your experiences in hunting down a Wii been different?