Wii hunting was a bit of an adventure. I had a Christmas gift voucher from Myer, and it was earmarked for a Wii, and so that meant haunting Myer. I didn’t really realise how scarce they were until the Hornsby store told me to come back at the end of January, and Kmart and Target were also Wii-free. A week later I popped into the city Myer store just in case and they had a Nintendo Wii—back in stock!
sign, so I asked them to bring one out with a spare controller. No spare controllers they said. OK then, just the console.
I turned up at the Twisted µConf with the Wii and was immediately harassed by people who wanted to know if I’d seen the nunchuks for sale, somewhere, anywhere. No, I said, and not the controllers either. And that was when I realised that Andrew and I wouldn’t be playing Wii tennis together for a while.
I should have looked around earlier this week for online orders. I went to EB Games, Games Wizard and Myer in Hornsby today and Myer, David Jones, JB Hi-Fi and EB Games in the city, and sent Andrew off to JB in Hornsby, but none of them have any controllers or nunchuks, and actually, I don’t think that any of them have the console in stock any more either. All the Nintendo Wii—back in stock!
signs had been taken away again at Myer in the city, and JB Hi-Fi is taking pre-orders for the next Australian shipment, expected early February. That’s going to be one hell of a boat.
I found out that Wii remotes are being bundled with Wii Play for $79.95 (the remotes are normally $69.95, so it’s mostly remote with cleaned up E3 demos thrown in as Wii Play for another $10). I pointed a browser at dstore.com.au which was good to me at Christmas, getting me Sid Meier’s Railroad for Andrew in time and lo, they claimed to have the Wii Play and remote packs in stock. Like the careless idiot I am I waited four hours to place the order, and evidently just squeaked in, because the item has already moved to Display only
status which I hope means that they sold out shortly after I bought one because otherwise it means they accepted my money under false pretenses. The order is showing up in the system, so fingers crossed. I might have just ordered Sydney’s last Wii remote or something. Ebay doesn’t show above-retail pricing though, so the scarcity mustn’t be ludicrous.