The Wii was released over a year ago and they are still having production shortages. I waited a full year before even pondering looking for one, and it still took me about 3 weeks and multiple stores to find “The very last one.” I got lucky buy getting mine a few months ago, but I have friends who started looking right before thanksgiving 2007 and got laughed out of the stores with the intimation that they’d be gone till 2008.

We are now in the Wii’s 2nd holiday shopping season, and they are screwed. These puppies can’t be had for love, but occasionally for a very lot of money. Given that there has been a consistent shortage for a year, you’d think that Nintendo might have considered fixing the problem rather than just saying “oh well, we upped our estimates a tad, we met our projections, so we’ll pull the advertising.” Instead, their shortsightedness has created an outrageous gray-marketing scalping marketplace.

That’s just weird.