| Dolla Dolla said: There's a big benefit in having stock for the holiday season, especially for the stores giving you shelf space. If you're the only store that doesn't have Wii's during the holiday rush, guess who gets the least customers? |
There have always been and will always be fashionable items that are sold out at Christmas time, whether it's G.I. Joes or Swatch Watches or Cabbage Patch Dolls or Furbys or Tickle Me Elmos. That doesn't change a thing. Falsely manipulating the supply chain doesn't change that.
Sold = sold. Wiis will not be available at Christmas unless Nintendo can contract with another assembly partner, as Foxconn is clearly making as many as they can. Bringing another partner online to build more units is the only solution.
The only thing stockpiling achieves is disorienting customers who are in stores right now, cash in hand, ready to buy your product and all the accessories and peripherals with it. Not only would Nintendo be losing money on current lost software sales, they'll lose far more money later in the life cycle as all the current titles wind up back at EB Games/Gamestop as used over the course of a full calendar year since the console's launch. At that point, we're talking about tens of millions of dollars of profit that Nintendo is just handing over to EB as a used software seller.
I don't buy it. Holding back stock would be the dumbest business decision Nintendo has made since the Virtual Boy if it were true.
