By Tiberius Jonez
Before Nintendo launched the Wii they promised the console would expand the videogame market to previously untapped consumers with an easy, low-stress, user-friendly experience. Fast forward nearly two years later and the Wii experience is anything but stress-free. Angry consumers are being confronted by “sold out” signs at retailers instead of Wii Fit and Mario Kart games.
Nintendo’s hardware and software supply problems following the Wii’s launch have persisted for so long that what was once perceived as the result of unexpected success is now being recognized as an inexcusable mismanagement of the companies supply chain.
Rob Fahey of gamesindustry.biz has written a fairly scathing, but accurate, editorial about Nintendo’s negligence toward their newly found consumers. Essentially telling Nintendo if they want to be the market leader then they need to stop acting “like an overgrown cottage industry” and more like “the vast globe-spanning corporation it has grown to become.”
I have to whole-heartedly agree with him. Nintendo has a long history of inflexibility and straight-up hubris that once cost them the huge hardware advantage they held with the NES and Super Nintendo before the birth of the original Sony PlayStation. From inflexible licensing agreements to unwillingness to adapt to their own growth, Nintendo has repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for the very customers they are so proud of having garnered.
At some point the demand Nintendo thinks they are creating by holding back hardware becomes a backlash against their product with the end result being money left on the table that could have gone into the corporate coffers.
