The Internet: Offering Insight by Giving Voice

Yesterday I wrote a fairly detailed, research-oriented post on gaming. Now I'm looking for nuggets all the time, and occasionally I find one that reminds me why watching for what comes across the Internet is so interesting, and potentially so important. And this example, believe it or not, has to do with the Nintendo Wii. The source: a guy who works in Target actually stocking the units in the store. He might have a pretty interesting perspective at a grass roots level, no?

From allgames.com 10/28/2007, Wii Shortage is Nintendo Bull Shit:

Here's the deal I work at Target in electronics at night unloading trucks, which means that I see all the new product we get in before they're released. Last night (10/27/07) I was doing my job and found that we had received 7 boxes of Wiis and in each box are 3 of the system. I thought to myself well this is rare and quickly put them in the back room because we do not put consoles out the day I was working, (this is dumb I know but this is not the first dumb thing I have come across since working there that made no sense.) well as I go to put them on the shelf of the electronics room I look around for a place to put them and as I 'm doing this I look up on a very high shelf. Now what do you think I saw, well is was none other then more boxes of Wiis looking down at me (totaling 48 with the others I had just received) and as I saw them I thought we have never had this many in store in a month's time and Target is not even the a major benefactor of game sells so we do not supply much.

I don't know just thought it was interesting that there are so many of this "hard to find" system in a back room of a Target in South Jersey 2 weeks+ from Black Friday.....

Now this is just one's guys view in one store of one retailer, but it is kind of interesting. But wait, as I've discussed on many occasions, it is sometimes the comments that are even more interesting than the posts themselves. Here is a comment from the aforementioned post:

Actually I've been reading this... not sure if it's true or not... but the Wii is now easy to find in Japan. It's finally sticking around store shelves so Nintendo has been shifting some of their supplies over to the US because in the US it's still selling like crazy so you may see more Wiis on store shelves for the holidays then ever before but still with that said they believe that it's still going to sell out which is why they upped their projected sales for March 2008 to 17.5 Million.

Another things to consider is that the amount of consoles that get shipped weekly is 100,000 to all major retailers. Microsoft bumped their amount to 120,000 because when the 360 was launched it was a hard find like the Wii up until March. The Wii has already sold 12,000,000+ in less than 12 months so they have been selling practically a million consoles a month so they have upped the amount more than 200% and with this increase it's still selling like crazy.

The shift from Japan to US may put more Wiis on stores shelves in US but with the amount of Wiis being sold in the US it doesn't seem to want to die down which is why I think Reggie thinks there will be a shortage.

Again, just one data point, not something that in and of itself is going to cause you to go out and either go long or short NTDOY. But it is an interesting factoid that can play a part in building your investment mosaic. The Internet never ceases to amaze me. A guy unloading trucks at Target blogging about his experiences? He gets a voice, we get some insight. Sounds like a fair trade.

Comments

[Michael]

Roger, I'd suggest your trust for this insight not go as deep as your trust in The American Dream.

Padded blogs and comments are already the norm.

[Agoracom]

"He gets a voice, we get some insight. Sounds like a fair trade."

Not really. We get an opportunity to turn a huge profit, he just gets a voice. I would call that "advantage investors"!

Regards,
George

[Adam]

I agree with you, this is an interesting phenomenon with uncertain implications for Nintendo--they could pull a Heelys having glutted the market just in time for demand to fall or keep on this stellar pace.

The high or increasing probability that holiday shoppers will be able to find a Wii at brick and mortar retailers (like that particular Target), bodes poorly for eBay in the short term, which was expected to benefit from a booming secondary market for Wiis and iPhones (the latter being frustrated by the no cash/two per customer policy).

Disclosure: no position in these companies.

[Jason]

Interesting factoid: I live/work in HK, and as far as I know, there is no HK spec Wii. We have US and Japan spec Wii's, and there are a lot of US Wii's to be found (I picked mine up launch day with no pre-order and no problems). Not really sure why there are so many US Wii's here given the shortage in the US.