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Retailers nationwide could come under fire from consumer groups for only selling the Wii console in high-priced bundles, with online forums already buzzing with complaints about the High Street.
Research carried out by MCV suggests that certain retailers that have Wii stock are only selling the sought-after console as part of game bundles costing up to a whopping 400 – over double the console’s standalone price.
Several Gamestation, Zavvi, HMV, Toys R Us and Woolworths stores chose not to sell MCV a standard Wii console for the usual 179.99 when contacted, offering only multi-game bundles as an alternative. Prices ranged from 250 for a Wii with two games at HMV to a five game bundle ay Gamestation for 400.
And at the time of press, callers trying to contact many GAME stores across the UK were met with an automated message stating that Wii was out of stock and that there is no news on when the next batch will arrive.
Online giants Play.com and Amazon.co.uk are simply listing the console as ‘sold out’, with no pre-order system in place and no hint of when the console might be available again. Just this week Amazon admitted to CVG that it had sold its latest batch of 1,400 in just ten minutes.
We are shipping lots of stock into retail on a weekly basis,” said a Nintendo spokesperson. As you will have seen from the ChartTrack sales figures, there has been an increase in sales over the past couple of weeks, which proves that there has been stock in the channel. We don’t anticipate being in a zero stock situation, though. Demand for DS will mean that there may be pockets where stock is limited. But we won’t have the same level of shortages as there are with Wii.”
