So what happened? How can Nintendo be so far behind in production so long after the introduction of the system? The answer is that they're not behind in production, it's that the fallen dollar has removed most of the profit from selling Wiis in the US.
(T)he analyst, Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan, said the real culprit for the Wii shortage in the U.S. is the weak dollar...Ouch. I discovered I can buy Wiis online if I am willing to pay a $65 premium. I might just do that in the end. In the meantime, we're still unpacking and we haven't yet had the time to play it anyway.
With a weak dollar, foreign companies that sell their goods in the U.S. for dollars and then convert those dollars to their native currencies get a smaller profit than if they sell their products in countries with strong currencies of their own (such as Europe with the euro). In other words, Nintendo makes a bigger profit on Wiis sold in Europe than on Wiis sold in the U.S.
So Nintendo, Mr. Pachter said, has been behaving perfectly rationally by sending excess Wii consoles to Europe to satisfy the more profitable consumers there.
3 comments:
They are still scarce. My sister-in-law saw one on the shelf last week and bought it. She got home and called around to her friends to see if anyone needed one.
No one did. So she returned it. The employee behind the counter was dumbfounded, this had never happened before.
She thought about putting it up on eBay, but she's not out to make money on the thing.
She could have made about $100 on it.
I have NEVER seen a Wii in the stores. They have accessories and games, but there has never been a Wii on the shelf here as far as I can tell.
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