Nintendo will be withdrawing TV ads due to the massive shortages in Wii units. A spokesman of the Japanese group claimed that the demand for the Wii "has been unprecedented and higher than Nintendo could ever have anticipated." The Wii has already shipped 14 million units this year, but Nintendo is planning to raise that number to 17.5 million units. The Wii mainly attributes its success to its appeal to non hardcore gamers. Now the question is if the Wii will continue to draw the interest of casual gamers or of people new to the gaming world into 2008.
Nintendo is poised to withdraw planned television advertising for the Wii because of the severe shortages of the games console in the run-up to Christmas.
A spokesman for the Japanese group said that demand for the Wii, which made its global debut a year ago today, “has been unprecedented and higher than Nintendo could ever have anticipated”.
He added that the company is “looking at moving some advertising on some products into early 2008” because it wants to “act responsibly”.
Nintendo has hiked production targets several times in recent months and now plans to ship 17.5 million Wiis globally this year, up from an original 14 million.
Dismissing suggestions that it has engineered shortages to build hype around the console, Nintendo says its supply chain is working at full capacity, producing 1.8 million units a month.
According to analysts, next year will decide whether Nintendo's tactic of building a video games machine "for people who don't like video games" has provided, in the Wii, a vehicle for a long-term strategy.
If it does not, Nintendo executives privately admit, the current severe shortages could prove "a very serious missed opportunity".
Piers Harding-Rolls, the Screen Digest analyst, said: "The issue of supply management has to be questioned, not least because 2008 is going to be the crunch year for the Wii. It's then that we'll discover whether it's a fad or something with legs."
The Wii has outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 each by more than two-to-one this year.
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