Giant Bomb Video Game News

Jeff made that offhand remark in the office yesterday, apropos of nothing in particular, just because nearly 24 months after the Wii's launch it is actually still rather difficult to find the damn thing at retail. They only had one of them left, he says, but there it sat unclaimed on the shelf, waiting for someone to give it a happy home. I bet it didn't last long.

There's a number of reasons I still don't own a Wii yet (where's the fruit-flavored rainbow of other-colored consoles, Nintendo?), but lack of hardware availability is the main culprit. Lack of exciting software is the other side of that coin. If there were any games out on the system since last year's holiday season a guy like me could get excited about, I would have invested more effort in tracking one down. But as the lineup stands, it's just not worth the effort to me to find a Wii. (It's been a long time since Mario Galaxy and No More Heroes.)

Getting a console might finally require slightly less effort soon, according to this quote on holiday Wii availability from an interview MTV Multiplayer did with GameStop's Bob McKenzie.

Our look from Nintendo...is that it will be much, much better than it has been the last two years. I can’t say we will be in stock every day throughout the holiday season but I can tell you that the current flow we’ve seen coming from Nintendo on Wii hardware makes us very confident that we will meet the business model that we’ve got.

That actually jives with this analyst report I found from a year and a half ago stating the Wii supply problems would persist through 2009. So it's not like we weren't warned. And as far as the dearth of hardcore-focused Wii games is concerned, it seems that this slow ramp-up on console supply might actually coincide with some new games you'll actually want to play after all.