During today’s short-notice Nintendo group phone interview, Reggie Fils-Aime announced a Wii ‘rain check’ program partnership with specialty retailer GameStop.
On December 20 and 21, consumers willing to give up the ghost and admit to their children that Santa isn’t real will have the opportunity to pick up a “rain check” for a Wii console. Paying in full will guarantee a console for pick-up sometime in January, with the caveat that the console must be picked up by January 29. While Reggie wasn’t able to talk about an exact number, he’s confident that there will be plenty of rain checks to go around.
“[GameStop] have many tens of thousands of rain checks available across their roughly 3,000 points of distribution,” he says. “So we expect this to be a very strong program, and we expect this to be a great way for consumers who desperately want a Wii to be able to have something — their certificate — that guarantees their family that they’ll be able to get a system in January.”
For those not willing to wait and are prepared to continue the hunt, Reggie also says that system will be available this weekend, with six national retailers actively promoting the availability in circulars (Best Buy, K-Mart, Sears, Target, Toys ‘R’ Us, and Circuit City). He also mentions Wal-Mart as a place frustrated gift givers might want to stalk — they’re said to be pushing out “massive amounts” of Wii systems all week long.
I’ll be reviewing my call notes shortly in an attempt to pull out some more gems, but don’t get your hopes up — the call was mainly focused on Wii availability (it’s hard to get) and Wii production (they’re trying, they couldn’t have anticipated demand, and so forth). We already knew that, right?
