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Wii Pre-orders Going Well

October 17th, 2006

If you needed a sign that the Nintendo Wii is going to belie its ridiculed name and challenge both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, then take a look at the news from the States where games retailer Gamestop has already sold out its preallocated supply. It did so on the very first day that preordering opened.

Preorders for the PS3 are still open, several days after they commenced.

So, at a glance the news looks extremely good for Wii. Anecdotal reports from across the pond suggest queues for Wii were longer than for the PS3 and more diverse as well. However, the headline stat does not provide the complete picture. Because of production delays with the PS3, Sony has reduced the number of PS3s available for preorder by a fourth. Each Gamestop store may only be getting a number of units in the low teens. At least Sony is being open about the figures.

Wii is suffering no reported production problems, but even so, Nintendo has not yet confirmed store by store availability. So each Gamestop manager has to guess, and with the prospect of sobbing children and angry parents on their threshold if they get it wrong, most will be guessing on the conservative side.

So Wii’s selling out its preorder allocation is not too surprising, as no one is entirely sure what that allocation is.

Most analysts expect Wii to be a plucky loser to the PS3 and today’s news only goes a little way to challenging that expectation.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Console Gaming