I Finally Found Wii, But...

Target won't sell it to me!

OK so you know that I have been looking for my Wii for more than 5 months now. A few days ago I stumbled this website that taught me how to check Target's inventory through their price scanner (the code is 207-25-0001).

OK so today I dropped by my local target to restock my cleaning supply, fridge and food cabinet. While there, I dropped by the electronic section and found no Wii in the shelves. Then I stopped by a price scanner and checked for a Wii. And alas, the thing said that the store's stockroom has Wiis so I approached the redshirt lady behind the electronic counter and ask if the store has Wii in stock. She quickly said "NO" and then I told her what I saw in the scanner. She finally relented and grabbed her handy talkie and called the stockroom. She said the store has Wii in the back but they couldn't sell it to me until Sunday. I asked "why?" She said it was simply store policy. She told me to go back on Sunday and line up in the morning and get a ticket or something. I reasoned to her that it was in both my and Target's best interest to sell me a Wii at the time. First of all it would improve the store's financial by reducing their working capital /inventory. She would also free up some precious shelf/storage space (maybe to keep excess PS3 inventories). Target's ratios will surely look better to those Wall Street analyst. Also I tried to teach her about time value of money that $1 at the time is better than $1 on Sunday. Well apparently my geeky arguments didn't work and I left the store without a Wii.

In my mind I said to myself that this is BS. Why would Target make their inventory public if they won't sell it to me. maybe they should simply close their inventory system closed to the public and internet sites like itrackr.

Oh on the topic of BS, yesterday I stumbled upon this interesting article about paid stock basher on Yahoo! finance message boards somewhere. Thanks to Jon at ValueWiki, I learned out that it's a hoax that's been around since 2000. Wow, I probably should stop paying attention to those boards now, it's pretty scary how much convincing hoax is out there.

Where's my Wii?

OK initially I wanted PS3 for Christmas. But during our Christmas shopping, my fiancee spotted a Wii demo and she got hooked. So we scratched out PS3 and decided to get Wii instead. Ok after trying (not so) hard we didn't get any Wii under our Christmas tree. I didn't manage to get Wii for my recent birthday either. It's simply flying out of the shelves faster than I can say Wee. However, to my surprise I have been able to spot a stack of PS3's at my local BestBuy and Target. It's been tempting to grab one but $700 is a steep price to pay, and we don't even have an HDTV yet. So for now we decided to continue watching patiently for any Wii's to show up in our friendly neighborhood retailers' shelves.

it's impressive, that Nintendo with Wii has been able to overtake Sony's dominance in thie new gen console war. Look at this sales chart, courtesy of vgcharts.com. Yes Sonny was behind, because it had production problem, even now I think Nintendo has more production capacity for Wii than Sony does for PS3, but I can't find my Wii and find a small stack of PS3 inventories. Does this mean that Sony's in trouble?

I still plan to get a PS3 sooner or later. I got hooked to the Metal Gear and Final Fantasy series, but maybe I can live with Mario and Zelda instead. Or maybe if PS3 truly tanks, Konami and Squenix decides to move the Metal Gear and Final Fantasy to Wii instead. hummm. OK I'll start saving again to make up of the money I lost in the last few days in the stock market bloodbath.