Wii Are Doing Well

I tried to find Wii Fit today, but to no avail.  The darn thing is sold out.  I guess I won't be losing weight while playing video games for another week.

But while looking for Wii Fit, I noticed something else: there weren't any Wii's either.  Here it is 2009 and there STILL aren't any Wii's in stores.  The thing's been out since November 2006 and Nintendo still can't make enough to keep up with demand.  Say what you will about the Wii and about its library of games, but the peoples love it.  Perhaps it's the fact that it's innovative.  Perhaps it's the fact that it's cheap(er).  Perhaps it's the fact that it has Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Smash Bros.  Or perhaps it's the fact that there are like a million crappy kiddie minigame collections and parents just love to buy them for their kids.

I remember the good old days:  the days when parents didn't buy their kids Nintendos.  I was only given one console (a SNES, btw) by my parents, and it was because my sisters and I said one Christmas that we wanted to put together our "big gift" in order to get one console.  The rest of my consoles (and they are numerous), I bought.  From the used NES I got in 5th grade to the Wii I got at launch, I've bought them all.

Before Christmas, I went to Best Buy to get some Wiimotes so that I had an even 4, and in the Wii section I encountered some confused parents.  They were apparently buying their child a Wii, several controllers, Mario Kart, extra Wii wheels, and classic controllers.  Add all that up, you're looking at $400-500.  That.  Is.  Ridiculous.  (Especially in this economy)  And on top of it, they didn't even know what they were doing.  They had to ask me if extra Wiimotes came with protective jackets or whether they had to buy some extra.  I guarantee that if I had said that they didn't come with jackets, they would've bought extras without a second thought.  What the heck? (This phenomenon of parents blindly buying things for their kids and what it says about their investment in their child's leisure time should probably be explored in another post.  But not now.)

So maybe this is why the Wii is doing well.  It's sold itself to parents who have too much money to throw at their kids' free time.  And now proper gamers like myself can't find Wii Fit to save our lives.  Thanks a lot, rich, doting parents!