Thursday, November 22, 2007

:: Wii Woes - a 2007 Holiday Blog Special

Being a marketer as well as an interaction designer, I got sucked into the emotional maelstrom caused by the "Wii shortage of 2007."

I mean, c'mon, the damn console changed the way we fundamentally interact with video games! I deserve to own that thing. Unfortunately, like thousands (could it be millions?) of people worldwide, I will have to wait until Nintendo grows tired of "playing me."

To say that Nintendo pulled off a marketing miracle this year, is an understatement. With the "Wii" campaign, formerly the Nintendo "Revoultion," Nintendo focused on innovative gameplay...not what their competitors were doing. It worked. While Sony and Microsoft served up "all-in-one," high-tech, utility knives, Nintendo just made games fun to play. So, they had a really good product. Focusing on one core element also allowed them to make the product inexpensive to consumers (until the Christmas shopping crunch forced prices higher). Add to this magic potion, a sleek and clean piece of hardware reminiscent of an overgrown ipod, and you have a product that shows promise in the next generation console war.

Being a Sony loyalist, and up until I realized who I was...I struggled with the idea of purchasing a Sony PS3. But the fact is, I'm 36 years old, I work 70 hour weeks, and I just don't have time to get sucked into a sweeping RPG epic...I just want to unwind, after work, with a few rounds of virtual golf!

The console choice for me became obvious, and my hunger for the Wii grew stronger.

Excited about the finality of my decision, I trotted off to my local Best Buy to purchase a Wii. To this point, I had no idea about the global supply drought caused by the Wii hunger that was shared by people all over the world. Looking for the coveted console, I approached the sales guy walking the floor, and was met with the most condescending smirk and reply that I've ever received. Of course they didn't have the Wii. It was like I had missed the fact that the U.S. had waged a war on Iraq. I work online, spend most of my waking hours on the internet, how could I have missed that "Top Headline."

So, the hunt began...soon I was conducting epic Google, Froogle, eBay, and Link Crawler searches to get my hands on a Wii. EBay was the worst, man. I spent hours scanning all auctions with "buy it now" options. I even considered paying up to double the actual $250 price tag for the Wii.

I was up at all hours of the night, in the "Wii" hours you might say, to get my hands on the thing. Finally, my wife came into my office. She saw the dozen or so windows open on my PC desktop. She knew it was time for an intervention. Luckily, she stopped me from pulling the trigger on a shady auction listing on EBay. I was grounded...

I still have no Wii. But my wife's intervention may make the wait easier for me. I now only skim the EBay auctions on the weekend. It is merely a past-time. Of course, I probably won't get my hands on my own, shiny console until after the new year.

(reposted on Technorati Profile)

Jonathan Lupo - VP / Information Architecture - Empathy Lab