Have you been able to find a Wii lately? Nintendo’s hot video-game system continues to be difficult — if not impossible — to find a year and a half after its debut. I wrote about this phenomenon in an article today, which you can read here.

One place you can definitely find a Wii is on eBay, where more than 3,300 systems were up for auction to the highest bidder this morning. The going rate seems to be $300 to $350, once the exorbitant shipping costs (read: extra profit) are added to the winning bid — a tidy profit on the $249 console. One reader emailed me this morning to complain that I didn’t write in my article that store employees hoard Wiis for themselves and then sell them on eBay.  I couldn’t get any store to confirm that, but all kinds of prospectors are turning to eBay for video-game gold, not just store employees.

Another selling ploy for Wiis is to bundle the system with unwanted or unneeded games and accessories at a much higher price. Wal-Mart charges more than $700 for a bundle that includes the Wii, three accessories and seven games — the only way to buy the system at the store’s website.  One of the more decent bundles I’ve seen is GameStop’s Mario Bundle. It packages the Wii along with three of its best family games —  Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Party 8 — and extra controllers for $456 (plus $25 shipping), a fair price for truly useful accessories and highly rated games. It’s up for preorder on an April 30 ship date; quantities are limited.

If you’re patient, Wiis should be more visible by mid-May. Nintendo releases its highly promoted game Wii Fit on May 19, and some analysts believe (as mentioned in my article) that it will make the Wii console more readily available at Target and Best Buy to support the release of the interactive fitness game. In other words, Nintendo wants to make sure new customers can play the new game. (By the way, Nintendo announced a $90 retail price this morning for the Wii Fit game with balancing board.)

What has your Wii-buying experience been like? Did you find one easily? Or are you still looking?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 7:40 am and is filed under Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.