Confusion, shortages hobble US Wii Fit kickoff

A new controller gizmo with a supposedly "very limited supply"... Sounds like the standard Nintendo marketing strategy these days, heck they're always the ones "predicting" shortages before the new thing is even out. How about they make more games for the bunch of peripherals they already sold instead?

i didn't think there will be high demand for this board and "game" in america. i agree with a lot of people here that consoles are for games. it will be around 75 degrees for the rest of the week here in san jose ca and i won't choose to "exercise" on wii fit inside my house over playing some football or basketball at the park with my buds. we'll probably play some ssbb and cod4 afterwards.

foxpro-gt lol....... Wii fit will not take off in america .. i give it the 1 month it comes out to sell well but after that it will stop selling XD ******************************************************************** We'll see. It's already selling for $125 on Ebay. I think a lot of people are going to buy it. I bet is sells over 4 million units before the end of the year. Any takers? lol!!

Zombey, you cant insult other peoples viewpoint just based on those presumptions. The fact is, in MY AREA, which is not in the middle of no where, i have checked in whenever i'm in a relevant store since the Wii came out, and the Wii is gone every time, there isnt even a place to put them. I dont care how popular they are or how fast they sell in your store, if Nintendo was making and shipping them within their realistic parameters, they would be much more present on the store shelves than they are, as it ist they are collecting dust due to lack of shipments (at which point of course they will sell out quickly when they do arrive, i havent seen a channel this choked ever).

wii fit is not good, i think it's a little terrible

it's dumb. trust me.

I work in a regional chain and each of our stores received 30-50+ 3 weeks ago. As far as the retailers are concerned the date has always been the 21st. We've had it posted for 3 weeks or more, so no real unhappy customers here. It will be interesting to see how fast they sell.(P.S. we have about 20-30 stores in one metropolitan area)

my local best buy told me they weren't pre-ordering them...this was a few months ago....

I work for Best Buy, and we have had many copies of Wii Fit in our warehouse for days now, but cannot sell any until Wednesday. And because of Nintendo's official "May 19th release date" announcement, all the pre-order cards said it would launch that day, so everybody that picked up a pre-order came in today only to find out they have to wait another two days. And let me tell you, most of them were not happy. But even though we had many copies of it already, we could not sell any. So I'm sure many other stores are in the same boat as us, which really sucks...

Get a Wii. Wii gets you girls. If you don't have a Wii you don't like girls. That's my theory, because when I get in college (this fall) I'm telling all the girls I have a Wii and Wii Fit. I sure hope it works. Giggity...

I am tired of companies stating release dates and not having the game for a day or two. I want to know when the game will be in the store, not when it will be shipped to the store.

No! I have a date on the 29th of May, and I need to lose 130 lbs. How am I supposed to show up in style now?

GEEZ. I work at Gamestop, and I can tell you that people are never happy when stuff like this happens. I can only imagine what it will be like with this problem. Pre-orders really can piss people off.

foxpro-gt I agree, they should make a US version called Wii Fat, in which you get a Pizza rather than a balance-board. That would sell in the US.

i work at a bestbuy and we have not even got the game yet lol

@revolutionary0 - I work at Best Buy as well, and we only got about 50. Sadly, our preorders have been a complete clusterF (remember that notice going around on ETK to pull 20 of the 50 preorders? I pulled, somebody put them back) and now, we don't have a single unit to sell to customers who are walk-ins.

lol....... Wii fit will not take off in america .. i give it the 1 month it comes out to sell well but after that it will stop selling XD

I guess there are many eager people in the world who simply have a massive craving for excercise which is well good.....stay in shape!!

pardon me, not @dmish82, it was meant for Estebest

To anyone who has never actually gotten a gym membership. They cost $20-$50/month, plus they usually have a $150-$300 start-up fee. Lotsa people talking about the monthly gym fee without mentioning the initial investment.

@dmish82 I work at Best Buy and we've had about 100 of the game a week ago and all the boxes are labeled "Do not sell until 05/21/2008" which is weird considering that apparently the release date was today but our boxes say the day after tomorrow. It seems Nintendo wants the hype all to them selves. Might i add those are the most environmentally unfriendly boxes i have ever seen, box within a box, within a box surrounded by about four layers of tape to hold it together. Same thing happened with the MK Wii launch, a lot of cardboard.

@_guenter_26 "This has got to be the worst thing Nintendo has made, seriously, who would spend $90 on a game to exercise when you could just go outside and jog for free or sign up for a gym for 1/4 or less than that." Wii fit is a $90 one-time charge. A gym membership is anywhere from $20-50/month and is recurring. However, I do agree that I'd much rather head outside and go for a run.

Interesting that some stores don't even have it yet. I work at Toys R Us and we've had like 50 copies of it for almost 2 weeks now.

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

Reason why I don't have a Wii. There aren't any left.

_guenter_26 This has got to be the worst thing Nintendo has made, seriously, who would spend $90 on a game to exercise well nintendo is hoping your mom, or wife, or girlfriend, and based on everything that i've seen it's already sold very well, and would sell a ton more if they werer going to be out there wednesday.

Speaking of shortages, I still can't find a Wii at any retail store (unless you stand outside in the morning)

This has got to be the worst thing Nintendo has made, seriously, who would spend $90 on a game to exercise when you could just go outside and jog for free or sign up for a gym for 1/4 or less than that.

Ah who cares I am to busy playing brawl to exercise. Plus you play games to have fun not exercise. If I wanted to stay in shape I would jog, run, ride a bike, or play sports with friends. And its FREE!!!!

So the game comes out a few days late, it's not the end of the world. Sheesh people need to be more patient.

@SonicRaptor I feel ya. I'm the manager on duty that day and I'm solo for 4 hours. It's gonna suck!!!

I work at a Toys R Us in NC and got in 60 of them. 40 of which were presold.

i've seen a few at my local gamestop, woulda bought a copy if i didn't need to ay off my mgs4 preorder

The EB Games I work at has had them in for over 2 weeks now, I guess its only in America? (I'm in Canada)

Wonderful, and I work on May 21st and get to explain why we don't have Wii Fit in stock. Thanks Nintendo, not only can you not keep Wii's in stock you have another thing in short order.

What a mess. See this is why video games should always go on sale on Tuesday the day that movies get released. Either that or on Friday's. It would make things a lot less confusing.

this sucks

Heh...I work in a retail store and we're under the understanding that the game came out on the 21st as well. But why does everyone think that there's a shortage? Hell, my store's in the middle of nowhere and we've plenty. Heck, we've had plenty since early last week. And why does everyone think that there's a shortage of Wiis?! They really can't make them fast enough. They hit the shelves and sell out within the day at the most. If you think that that's a shortage then you're a fool. It just means the demand for them is so high that stores can't keep stock of them. It also doesn't help that some of the stock is going to online retailers that sell them ONLY in bundles, driving the price up to even $600+. Why is noone here taking into account the fact that the wiis that are produced have to go to hundreds of different stores? They can't ramp up production anymore because they already have auxillory manufacturing in high gear to help with the demand. No more can really be started up because, once demand goes down, they'll just be sitting there collecting dust. TRUST ME. THERE ISN'T A SHORTAGE. THEY SELL OUT WITHIN THE DAY. Having less than the demand doesn't drive up demand. Heck, most people that were looking for one have givin up and gone for the 360. They're not trying for a shortage. At this point it most definately would not make good business sense.

Good job Nintendo. Now people are gonna have to actually exercise for more than a week.

This is messed, we got 10 last friday with a "do not open until may 21st" sticker. strange, and confusing, lol

This is one of the many reason why I chose "Boom Blox". Actually, it's because "Boom Blox" is an amazing game that deserves to be as popular and promoted as "Wii Fit".

Well... Getting this next week or tomorrow changes one thing for me.

Wow, leave it to Nintendo to not do a better job organizing their efforts. This shouldn't be a surprise, considering how they've handled the Wii systems. We sell them at my work, we still have a waiting list with people on it. We are supposed to be selling Wii-Fit, but I don't even know how that's turning out. None of our customers have been really excited about it.

This is just bad business on the part of Nintendo. It is no secret that they have been keeping inventories of the Wii low in order to prop up demand. Now it seems they are pulling it with the Wii-Fit. Come on Nintendo, it is all made in Taiwan which can produce products like mad.

"Confusion, shortages hobble US Wii " yeah? what else is new? My current joke when something, anything, wii related comes out is, "oh yeah? so, i need a Wii to play that right? where can i get one of those???" I dont care if the Wii is the most populr system ever (which it might not be, even number wise), any competent company should have it present on store shelves pretty consistently at this point.

No Wii Fit!! Nooo! I'll have to go out into the real light and exercise. Maybe even meet real people...

Gaticus, the 360 and PS3 are problem free as far as I'm concerned. The problems the PS3 had- bad launch, too expensive, not enough games- are all pretty much gone. The 360's hardware has been solved as well, and the only thing that it still have some issues with is X-box Live's reliability, and that's not even mentionable considerable the Wii's online. And in my opinion, the Wii's games have been sub par. I can think of only 4 I have considered AAA, and those are Metroid, LOZ, Mario, and No more Heroes. For a console about 1 1/2 years old, the list should be longer than that. Each console has its issues, but the Wii has the most by far.

It's definately released on Wednesday. I work at Best Buy and we already have them, we just cannot sell them until Wednesday because of a "hard street date"

May 19th eh? I was told it would be the 20th of May that Wii Fit would come out. So I wasn't really expecting to pick it up today anyway. While I'm having some second thoughts as to how much I Will use it? I then remind myself that its a one time payment not a monthly/yearly one for a gym membership and instructor. My only other worry is that I might fall off the balance beam that comes with it and some how injure myself. That aside I'm still kindof looking forward to it.

The game launches in Nintendo World in NYC on May 19th and then on May 21st it's out everywhere.