Follow the Leader [ COMIC ]

I am definitely not anti-Nintendo. Besides the Virtual Boy, I own every system that Nintendo ever released in the US. And for all these Nintendo consoles, I roughly own 650+ games between them. But (bold text means its important), this whole Wii thing bothers me.

The system has been a hot commodity for over a year now. And with the Christmas season upon us again, its just as difficult now as it was last November to get your hands on one. The problem is, is that the people who are buying them are not actually getting them to game. True, they’ll play their Wii Sports and Wii Play and own their own token game (probably created by Nintendo as well), but that’s about it. Joystiq reported that the console to games sale ratio is lower with Nintendo than any of this gens consoles. So why even buy a system if you’re not actually going to play it? Because its trendy, its cool to own one and since they’re hard to come by everyone wants one… Tickle Me Elmo, anyone?

So I’m bothered by the fact that its trendy? Not really. My problem is that when the Wiis are no longer scarce, they’ll then become less trendy, cool and desired. When this happens GameStop and eBay will be bombarded with used Wiis, no one will be buy new Wiis, Nintendo will take a major hit and game manufacturers will notice the sales declines lose confidence in creating games for the Wii. In turn hurting those people who actually bought a Wii to play it.

Now don’t panic, there is a very simple solution. Nintendo must never make the Wii readily available… at least not until the Wii’s successor is released. So far they’ve been doing a pretty good job at that.

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