GameStop calls Wii shortage "intentional"
- March 28, 2007 10:46 AM PST
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While addressing the subject of how the current Wii shortage will affect sales, GameStop COO Dan DeMatteo accused Nintendo of causing an artificial shortage.
By Eugene Huang
While it's known that the Wii shortage isn't helping retailers, not many key retail executives have gone as far as blaming Nintendo for their failures in maintaining a steady supply chain. Until now, of course.
During the investor conference call that followed the announcement of GameStop's financial results of the 2006 fiscal year, a central topic of discussion was the seemingly incurable shortage of Nintendo's Wii consoles, according to a report from Gamasutra. GameStop COO Dan DeMatteo assured investors that more stock would be arriving in the coming weeks, stating, "I believe that next week we get our first allocations of Wii and DSs, and we are quite pleased with those numbers.
"We were concerned about the dryness here in March, but it looks like April is going to be good," he later added.
But DeMatteo then publicly theorized that the Wii shortage was the result of a deliberate act on the part of Nintendo:
"[T]his is just my opinion, but I think [Nintendo] intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year," he stated. "The new year starts April 1st, and I think we're going to see supply flowing."
DeMatteo's statements were in reference to the fact that the standard Japanese timetable is still based on a 12-month year that begins on April 1st and ends on March 31st. This includes school years, hiring periods, and fiscal years.
Moving on, GameStop Chariman and CEO R. Richard Fontaine also offered his opinion on the recent PAL region PS3 launch, stating that the launch was, on the whole, "very good", but fell a little short of expectations. Final sales figures from the BBC News indicate that the weekend sales figures across Europe reached 600,000, which was 60% of the one million units available in stores across the continent on day one.
[correction: GamePro previously misreported that CEO R. Richard Fontaine made the allegations regarding the Wii's stock shortage, when, in fact, COO Dan DeMatteo made those statements. We apologize for the confusion.]
