Last year, I waited in line with a friend two weekends in a row starting at 4AM to try and get our hands on the highly-coveted Nintendo Wii.  No dice.  I almost lost hope on our second attempt, when we managed to get into the local shopping mall and hunker down on the warm tile floor outside the Electronics Boutique–we heard they were getting some in and we were number 9 and 10 in line.  Ha! to all the fools who were outside standing in the cold at Toys ‘R’ Us and Best Buy–we knew Best Buy had already given out their 40 golden tickets and Toy ‘R’ Us had done the same hours before (those folks went home to nap and created an illusion of no lines…only to wait in line and find out all the tickets were gone…oops).  But alas, EB only received 7 units and we were out of luck (and, well, I think they had a few more but an unidentified person with an empty backpack arrived with someone who worked at the store, entered when it was still locked up, and left before the gates officially opened with a full backpack that seemed like it contained some rather rectangular objects…you do the math).  We ended up getting ours via a mid-day shipment at a local Fred Meyer.

Surprisingly, this scene is being repeated a full year later, as folks line up all over the country at retailers hoping to get their hands on the Wii.  Wii sales have been out-pacing the Xbox 360 and PS3.  I think many people waited last Christmas to see if the Wii would fade out as a passing fad, or if it would live up to its hype.  But the Wii craze seems to show no signs of slowing.

Nintendo can’t seem to keep up with production, despite the console being on the market for a year already.  The WSJ has a great article discussing the shortage, and the pros–maintained hype with people standing in line all over the place–and cons–missed opportunities–that come with it.

I’m personally considering boxing up my Wii and throwing it up on eBay, playing my Xbox 360 for a month, and taking my profit to re-buy the Wii in January plus another sweet game.  But I may have tossed the box last week in the act of cleaning the garage…so that might not fly on eBay.  But it’s quite tempting…


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