This past week has been a rather eventful one for Nintendo fans. The company finally revealed that their Wii U console will launch on November 18th for a suggested price of either $299 or $349, depending on which bundle consumers pick. Some gamers feel that this is way too expensive for tech that will be overshadowed by the competition, whenever they get around to launching their next-gen hardware, but that apparently hasn't slowed the demand for the console at all.
GameStop has announced that it has completely blown through its pre-order stock for the Wii U Deluxe Set, and Best Buy's online store has done the same. They aren't the only retailers to do so either.
Despite analysts calling for Nintendo to drop the Wii U's price before the holiday season in 2013, the current sales trend is on the up. It was recently revealed that GameStop has maxed out their pre-orders for the popular Deluxe Bundle all across the United States. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on who you ask, the infamous brick-and-mortar game retailer still has the Basic Wii U set in stock, so anyone desperate to secure the new console the same day it hits retailers will be able to do so for the time being.
Online sales for Nintendo's successor to the Wii seem to have reached a climax as well, with Toys R Us, Kmart, Target, Sears, and Best Buy all maxing out their online stock. Similar to GameStop, Target still has the Basic set in stock.
Toys R Us, Sears, and Kmart, on the other hand, have yet to even open up pre-orders for the Basic set, but that should change relatively soon. Canadian gamers can still throw down their money for the Deluxe and Basic Wii U bundles at EB Games though, so any of our readers from the Great White North may want to take that into consideration.
Prior to this apparent shortage of Wii U bundles, president and CEO of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aime, said that the initial response from consumers has been very strong. If that's the case, then the dwindling supply of remaining pre-sales shouldn't come as a big surprise to him, and may even be expected depending on how much stock each retail chain has been promised by the gaming giant.
"We've announced the price and we have a number of retailers taking pre-orders and the feedback that I'm getting from retailers is extremely strong in terms of pre-sales and consumer excitement at the store."
Individual locations may still have a handful of Deluxe Sets available, but they won't be in stock too much longer if the current trend keeps up. It's easy to imagine that Nintendo may be limiting the initial supply of pre-orders to create a brief shortage, but it could also be retailers just playing it safe because they don't know how many units the Big N will be shipping to them yet.
Whatever the reason is for the disappearing supply of pre-sales, gamers looking to secure the Wii U on November 18th should act quickly.
Have you pre-ordered a Wii U? If so, was it the Deluxe Set or Basic Set?
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Sources: Games Industry & GenGame (via GoNintendo)