Nintendo pull UK Wii advertising?

[HEXUS]

As demand continues to outstrip supply, rumour has it that Nintendo has canceled Wii advertisements over the Christmas period.

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[TheAnimus]

Wow.

This is intresting because i thought they made more dosh from a Wii than they do a DS. By quite a long way.

So how come they've not ramped up production of Wii? Normally this sort of mad supply and demand the advertisments still run, and then at the 11th hour some arrive miraculasly. I remeber thinking it odd that last year, it was quite a few months before we saw Wiis hitting the shelf again. I think nintendo shareholders should be asking how come its so hard to make a Wii.

[Funkstar]

Are Nintendo getting free advertising and hype by starting rumours that they are pulling advertising?

Or am i as cynical as TheAnimus?

EDIT: oh and if they are pulling them, they are making the most of them until that happens, there has been one every ad break on The Discovery Channel this morning.

[kalniel]

So how come they've not ramped up production of Wii?

You mean by pushing the 'double volume production' button?

Fabs, assembly lines, raw material supply lines only have so much expansion factored in. If you design/build/test a facility that can potentially produce 10x your expected demand then you've massively over-engineered and you're on your way to financial ruin. They've built in something like 50% expansion and have already used all of it.

The only fault lies with them not realising that making a very small change from the unsucessful GameCube would push them into the stratosphere. And part of that fault also lies with their competitors.

[TheAnimus]

Its been a year. The Wii uses simple off the shelf components, there is no component that is new, or difficult to obtain, Nintendo to my knowledge own no fabbing houses, as such they will of just got a big boy to do it (iirc IBM) now IBM will happily have enough slack capacity to churn them out.

I didn't fault them last year, but this year, i think they've not moved enough on the phenomial sucsess. If they where a truely great firm, they'd of figured a way of doing so, as NOTHING in the Wii is difficult or hard to make.

[kalniel]

Of course, I'd forgotten they were fabless/non in-house

However IBM won't be doing everything - I wouldn't be surprised if some smaller company/ies were responsible for some components - they wouldn't have the capacity to increase production vastly so Nintendo would be forced to use another company. Why they don't do that could be due to contractual or cost reasons, who knows?

I think we'd need to know more about what exactly the bottleneck was to judge further - it could be the remotes

Of course, whatever boost they figured out would have to be reversible - if everyone's saying the wii has very short appeal then the second hand market should eventually eat into new console sales.

[Steve B]

Is it not in Nintys best interests to keep the demand high?

[kalniel]

Not really. Only if people who can't get a Wii are going to wait and want one again in 12 months time. Being unable to fulfill Christmas demand is a major blow for profitability because I don't think you're going to be likely to get the same demand again.

The only thing in their favour is that the competition for the female and younger console market is very poor, but I think they risk losing a lot of their male market to the other consoles by not supplying enough consoles.

[Steven W]

Are Nintendo getting free advertising and hype by starting rumours that they are pulling advertising?

Or am i as cynical as TheAnimus?

EDIT: oh and if they are pulling them, they are making the most of them until that happens, there has been one every ad break on The Discovery Channel this morning.

That's exactly how paranoid I'm getting these days.

[Teh_Evil_Cupcak]

Makes sense. Why bother spending millions on advertising when they've already built up the hype so that there hasn't been a wii anywhere for a decent price for ages? Loads of people already want the wii, way over the amount of the supply, so therefore = More profit.

[beanbandit]

Its been a year. The Wii uses simple off the shelf components, there is no component that is new, or difficult to obtain, Nintendo to my knowledge own no fabbing houses, as such they will of just got a big boy to do it (iirc IBM) now IBM will happily have enough slack capacity to churn them out.

I didn't fault them last year, but this year, i think they've not moved enough on the phenomial sucsess. If they where a truely great firm, they'd of figured a way of doing so, as NOTHING in the Wii is difficult or hard to make.

Your right in that Nintendo are fabless, but IBM do not make the console, they only make the CPU with ATI making the GPU. Those 2 components will be difficult to obtain if IBM or ATI have any problems producing them, ie high waste numbers.

The problem Nintendo have is that the Gamecube was a relative failure for them. I'm not sure if they were prepared for what happened when the Wii was finally released. You have many typical non-gamers enjoying what the Wii has to offer, Nintendo have for all effect created a new market. You try planning for something like that.

Currently production is sitting at 1.8 million units a month, planning for a major increase in numbers will not happen overnight. Components will have to be sourced, manufacturing facilities will need to be found if their current supplier has no spare capacity.

Lets look at it another way. So Nintendo can't make enough Wii's after a year out in the market. Microsoft still can't make a reliable 360 two years after release!

[beanbandit]

Makes sense. Why bother spending millions on advertising when they've already built up the hype so that there hasn't been a wii anywhere for a decent price for ages? Loads of people already want the wii, way over the amount of the supply, so therefore = More profit.

There are Wii's around if your willing to keep phoning up shops on a daily basis, and at normal prices, although they are makng you buy in a bundle. But i really can't see a problem if you get to select the games your self.

As for the over pricing, its not the usual highstreet shops that are ramping up the prices, its mainly the online shops who are sourcing grey imports across in other parts of euro land. Places like Scan, OCuK & Microdirect have all been stocking rip-off prices and ripping off people to the tune of £323. Nintendo do not make any more profit on the Wii by the over pricing, its the retailers and their supplies who do.

[spottylottie]

they won't be pulling the advertising - they will just be replacing it with the ds copy - otherwise they would be paying thousands of pounds to do this - not a viable option. But why replace the copy for another nintendo product that is like gold dust and is sold out everywhere! Stupid or what!

[vinnyT]

"We have been running the campaign all year round, but we want to take a responsible stance this Christmas and not fuel demand."

I don't believe that they are doing this for altruistic (?spelling) reasons, there is not point in spending money on advertising something that is not there.

They have stocks of the DS, so they target the advertising on that.

There's nothing good/bad about what they are doing, just business. And no one can really blame them for that.

[muddyfox470]

They've put stops to prevent amazon (eu sister companies i.e. in france and germany) from shipping to UK, and with them pulling the ad's they can save a bit of money and still sell all their consoles

The thing is though DS's seem to be increasingly harder to get hold of as well!

However Nintendo has taken such a massive risk releasing this hardware and it has paid dividends so hats off to them (they deserve it), even if some people are accusing them of manipulating the markets...

Ian