December 17, 2007 - Last Friday morning Nintendo held a phone conference to talk about the Wii shortages for the holiday season and what it means for Nintendo and the consumer. I had the opportunity to sit in on the conference and listen to the latest word straight from Reggie Fils-Aime.

Reggie opened up the conference talking about the shortages that we all know about for the Wii. They, as a company, have upped their production rate of the Wii from 1 to 1.8 million month since last year. In North America alone, the Wii unit has sold around six million units in a year, a feat that is unheard of for any gaming system to date.

In order to alleviate the pains of consumers finding a Wii this holiday season, Reggie unveiled a plan, in partnership with Gamestop, which will hopefully ease some of the ever-growing demand for the Wii. You will be able to purchase a Wii rain check in the full amount of the cost of a Wii to give this Christmas. If you decide to race out to your local Gamestop and purchase one of these rain checks, you are guaranteed a Wii at some point in January 2008. This promotion is only going to be available at the Gamestop near you, and supplies of the rain checks will be limited. Therefore, you might want to start heading out to the store right away!

There are also plans for the Wii to be massively pushed at other retail outlets including Buy, Target, Circuit City, Kmart, and Wal-Mart, to name a few. These "pushes" have not been given a specific amount of Wiis, but it is assumable they will move fast so you might want to be on the lookout for them. When asked if there was a specific reason for the shortages, Reggie responded that Nintendo was unable to predict the high level of demand the Wii has had since its launch.

Reggie also spoke of the Nintendo DS and how it was holding up this year as well. According to Reggie, the DS is selling so well that it is practically selling every five seconds. One question brought up after Reggie spoke was if there were any DS shortages this year as there were last year. Thankfully, there have been no reports of this occurring on the DS. Reggie also pointed out there may be a few spot shortages of the DS as we near the Christmas holiday in the Americas, but nothing compared to last year.

The mood of the conference shifted slightly as other reporters asked about the Wii itself. One question was whether Nintendo was happy with the quality of the software being produced for the Wii. Reggie responded that the level of quality varies from game to game on every system. A follow-up to this question was whether developers were unhappy about the availability of the Wii and whether they felt that was hindering their ability to sell as many pieces of software. Reggie pointed out that in November alone there was over 6 million pieces of software sold for the Wii. Maybe this is not as big of a deal as some would believe.

One question asked if there were any online voice chat capabilities for the Wii in the works. While Reggie mentioned no specific actions being taken for the Wii's capability for chat, he did mention that with the DS having the capability, it would only seem probable for the Wii to eventually have something similar. He further stated that it was really trying to finalize the peripheral that would enable the user to do this without harming the gameplay. Could Wii-Chat be in the near future for the Wii? We will keep you up to date!

A few more questions later and the conference was over. At the end of the conference, it was easy to see that Nintendo has a plan for trying to meet the demand for the Wii. We will just have to wait and see how this all plays out with great titles like Wii- Fit, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Mario Kart Wii set up for an early release next year.

For the full details and your listening pleasure, listen to the whole conference in the player below.

By Matthew Walker
CCC Project Coordinator