What Wii Hype Shortage Ploy? Huh?

[exindguy]

This story exists at all because Nintendo was accused of the same tactic waaaaay back in the NES days on big titles like the Super Mario Bros. sequels (2 and 3).

The story goes something like this:

Once upon a time in a magical place known as Redmond, in order to inflame demand and drive young boys into a ravenous, nigh-rabid, frothing state of potential Mario-deprived desperation, the insidious marketing machine at Nintendo would put out the word that the game might be hard to get because demand was going to be through the roof (which, of course, it was). Then, in true Rube Goldberg-ian fashion, the potential Mario-bereft child would embark on a series of tantrums/threats/homicides to make sure that they got to the store that very day or they might face an eternity without Super Mario Bros. 3 and, by extension, there was the implicit threat that their parents would rue the day (and maybe the night) with incessant cries of childhood dreams gone to wreck and ruin.

Now, naturally, there was likely a grain of truth to this. After all, this was the cartridge era and, unlike the optical media world of today, you couldn't just ring up the factory and order another 500k copies and get them in under 2 weeks, tops. Back then it took 6-8 weeks from the time the game 'went gold' 'til you could find it at your local TRU, Service Merchandise (anybody else remember those?). So there was the chance that, if you missed a low-run title, you missed it 'til you could get one on eBay a decade+ later. Of course the further implication was that Nintendo, being evil, would have a vast Mario-palooza at their warehouse in the Pacific northwest, bursting at the seems with untold millions of copies guarded by Israeli Mossad agents with shoot to kill authority that they would then drip-feed the market--not unlike chumming the water during a shark fishing expedition--to further send the rumor mill (and the Mario boys) into paroxysms of teeth-gnashing, Mario-less, terror. I guess that all this sheer evil-ness will allow Hiroshi Yamauchi to live forever by supping on the spent tears of almost-jilted Mario-fanatics.

Over time, this apocryphal tale has morphed into legendary status and *anytime* Nintendo can't meet demand for *anything* this story is trotted out by anti-Nintendo folk across the Internet in an attempt at...something? To tar Nintendo? To stick it to the 'man'? To get back at Daddy cause he never really loved me? I dunno, but for whatever reason fanboys do what they do (outside of generating a lot of heat and light on a soon-to-be-forgotten thread on some random message board across the vast intergalactic void that is the Internet or--in Kotaku's case--to drum up some traffic) It's basically a zombie that won't stay dead no matter how many times you shoot it and bury it (I guess they keep missing the brain or something).