By Stevie Smith Dec 11, 2007, 13:00 GMT
While the world goes to rack and ruin as besieged retailers struggle in vain to shelve Nintendo Wiis quick enough to appease the appetites of rampant pre-Christmas shoppers, there is, as always, a viable alternative to camping outside the local store in the hope that tomorrow will bring a bigger shipment…
Consumers looking for a Nintendo Wii this Xmas can get one on eBay... if they're willing to spend upwards of £30,000 GBP. Credit: Nintendo.
More pointedly, eBay, the one-time haven of bargains extraordinaire (now hovel of ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ traders that have all-but killed the experience) has units of the Wii for sale for those consumers desperate enough to get their clammy paws on Nintendo’s hot-selling home console.
Granted, the accompanying price tag may mean re-mortgaging the house or selling granny into the slave trade, but if you’re prepared to break the bank, risk your marriage, or bid farewell to your kids’ higher education in order to secure the Wii, then it’s yours – though investing the cash in an intensive course of therapy might be the better option.
That being said, with Nintendo admitting that supply simply won’t meet demand over the holiday season, it’s not difficult to understand why eBay sellers are slapping hugely exorbitant ‘Buy Now’ prices on their stock units and/or laughing their collective asses off as the frantic bidding war unfolds around them and the price rockets accordingly.
What sad, pathetic fools we are.
According to a report in UK newspaper The Guardian, Wii console bundles are currently selling on eBay for astronomical amounts ranging between £1,000 to £30,000 GBP, which is a bowel-loosening increase on comparative retail bundles. The Wii is also the most searched-for item on the online auction service, with the site seeing some 30,000 searches for "Wii," and "Nintendo Wii" over the last seven days.
Conversely, eBay.co.uk has registered some 11,054 searches for the Xbox 360, and 10,855 searches for the PlayStation 3.
For those fevered consumers currently considering the rectal sting of eBay, it may be worth visiting Wii-Consoles.co.uk, which is a retail monitoring site launched specifically to track the Wii’s availability through online stores as well as down on the high street.
At present, it shows that units of the Wii are available through KEdirect.co.uk, microdirect, and gamestation, the latter of which is offering a Wii bundled with Wii Sports, Billy the Wizard, a 1GB SD Memory Card, and 3 other selected games for a grand total of £299.89 GBP.
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Auction wreckerDec 11th, 2007 - 16:50:35
The prices of a £1000 plus that are being touted my the press, are infact the work of auction wreckers who have no intension of paying for auction. It's bad journalism like this, that fuals the hype.
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