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Quote:Brace yourself for another cranky Christmas, when hopeful children get up early only to discover there's no Wii under the tree.

The Nintendo console's broad appeal -- and a maxed-out supply chain that can't be ramped up to meet holiday demands -- is making it almost impossible to snag a Wii at normal retail outlets. With eBay scalpers selling them for hundreds of dollars over the console's $250 list price, it's easy to envision fistfights in store aisles as desperate shoppers compete for the few units on the shelves.

"I've never seen anything like this," says Michael Pachter, a videogame industry analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, about the overwhelming demand for Wiis. "Nintendo could not have expected this level of popularity."...

Retail chain scalping Wii allotment on eBay Wrote:There is no doubt that this holiday season, one of the hottest gifts is the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo of America's president, Reggie Fils-Aime, warned gamers months ago that supplies would be short and tried to alleviate the problem with a voucher program through GameStop. It's clear this won't be enough to meet demand, causing Nintendo to strongly urge retailers not to force consumers to buy bundles of software and accessories in order to take advantage of the shortage. At Opposable Thumbs, we ran a post about how to deal with these bundles and asked readers to contact us with their horror stories. One worker followed up quickly with his own twist on holiday price gouging: instead of selling the systems with bundles, a chain of Illinois/Missouri gaming stores called Slackers is simply dumping its stock onto eBay for the Buy It Now price of $399.99, an almost $150 markup...

Forced Wii bundles An independent game store's perspective Wrote:Yesterday, we talked about Nintendo's stance against forced bundles, and we gave some instructions about how to fight back against scuzzy retailers. I've already received some great leads, and I'm following up on them. Before we start reporting on that, though, I thought I'd share another e-mail I received from an independent retailer who has a very different perspective on bundling.

"I am a single independent video game store with annual sales of above $700,000. The markup on consoles is less than 1 percent, and games are around 14 percent," he writes. Running any game store is a hard business, and these margins don't help. What's worse is dealing with the distributors. "My distributors tell us that Nintendo has an 'attach rate' and we are often forced to purchase four games with each console. We pay $246 per console. If we sell the console for $249.99 retail, it's a $3.99 markup. If a person pays by credit card we lose money." ...