Wii U pre-sold out in most online retail stores

By: Muhammad Qasim Hassan

  |   September 18th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

It has hardly been a week since Nintendo announced the release date and price of Wii U for the North American region and in contrast to the earlier speculations, the response so far has been nothing short of impressive.

Sensing the strong demand for the product, some of the US retailers made the upcoming console available for pre-order, offering people the satisfaction that the latest technology would be theirs as soon as it hits the market.

If the reports are to be believed, GameStop is already sold out of the Deluxe bundle, the version of the Wii U which comes in black colour with a black GamePad and number of additional items, including a premium subscription that would allow players to get a neat discount on their digital purchases.

GameStop had made the Deluxe bundle available on both its online as well as retail store and within 24 years, they had no more pre-order sales to offer. The other bundle of Wii U, Basic version, is still available, though the rate at which the pre-order sales are going, it is not expected to remain available for long.

Other online shops such as Best Buy, Toys R Us and Target saw the same response of consumers as far as the pre-order sales of Wii U is concerned. Even though these retail stores did not sold out as quickly as GameStop, the eventually reached that point though the demand was still there.

Sears and K-Mart are among the retailer stores that are pretty much pre-sold out of their stock of Wii U, leaving Wal-Mart as one of the few remaining places for the consumers to turn towards in order to book themselves Nintendo’s latest hardware.

Amazon is yet to list Wii U, something that hardly comes as a surprise as the online retailer seems to be reluctant to offer Nintendo products.

The staggering response of the consumers following the announcement of Wii U’s release date and price is indeed surprising since the industry analysts were convinced that the latest hardware would fail to do well in the market.

The excellent pre-order sales can be attributed to two types of consumers, one who look to get their hands on the latest technology in the market as soon as possible in order to discover what it has to offer, whereas the other type of consumers are the ones who may be looking to get their hands on Wii U to later resell them during the upcoming holiday season when Wii U is become scarce in the market due to its strong demand.

Nintendo had plenty of reason to feel worried after witnessing the underwhelming response of the crowd during its Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference earlier this year when it revealed Wii U and its launch titles. However, looking at the interest of the consumers in getting their hands on the next-generation hardware, the Japan-based company would be really pleased and feeling much more confident about the future of Wii U.