I walked into my local EB today and to my surprise Wii's have been slashed by $50, this resulted in an impulse purchase from my friend who was only moments later disappointed to find they were sold out, so we walked over to the rival game store and they too had Wii's for the new price, but once again were sold out.

Sorry if the price cut news is old  but it's news to me.

i don't know what your talking about but nintendo would be idiots to drop the price when thier still sold out everywhere, business 101.

...is this a joke?

Sorry I forgot to mention that this is in Australia.

No, this is not a joke.

This must be some sort of in store promotion. There is no way there would be a price drop for the Wii without the entire internet finding out about it several weeks prior.

50AU is about 43US, so this would be a significant deal. How much do Wii's go for over there? Maybe the price drop was regional because you guys were already paying more than what the conversion rates should have been?

 I know some places have to pay more overall when converted to US dollars than US people have to pay, so maybe it was some sort of sympathy cut for you guys?

Wii's used to cost $398 AUD, today they were $348 AUD, And yes, the whole internet wold of known, that is why I was so confused, I was like WTF, but no, it is not a store promotion, at least I don't think so, because other stores that sell the Wii had it for the same new price.

Because of the value drop of the dollar against almost all other currencies, 350 AUD is still about 300 USD, so actually it's still 50$ too expensive. (we in Europe suffer from the same problem)

In Finland Kesko has dropped the price of the Wii by 20€, to 250€ but the price recommendation is still 270€. This is propably the cause of low dollar and Kesko noticing that Wii is selling better than any other console at the moment and try to lure gamers to those Kesko stores that haven't sold Nintendo products in years (not even the DS until recently).
Maybe the situation in Australia is a bit similar?
But i do hope that Wii sees a pricedrop soon, since the extra 50 was due the retailers insisted it.

It might be worthwhile to note that the Australian dollar has being smashing records against the US dollar recently, this may very well play a roll in the price cut.

Well, i haven't seen any $50 'price drops', but i have seen stores advertising it for less and less as time goes by, the lowest i've seen is a package of Wii and Strikers (same deal also for RE 4) for $399