Toys R Us Runs Out of Wii Preorders

Still waiting to preorder a Nintendo Wii? Sorry, but you're outta luck: the latest preorder campaign, which took place at Toys R Us stores, sold out within minutes of opening, just like all the other ones. According to personnel from my local Toys R Us, preorders started at 9:00am, and there weren't very many open slots available. And no online preorders are currently available, either - and might not even have been in the first place! And at this point, I'm not sure if any more preorder campaigns will ever surface anywhere else, either.

Other preorder campaigns for the Wii have met a similar fate. Preorders at U.S. GameStop and EB Games stores also sold out within minutes of opening, and Amazon.com sold out of preorders twice (the most recent one occurring on Friday) - and before the dot-com retail giant could even notify customers who signed up for e-mail notifications of such preorders to boot.

Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and other retailers have not started preorders yet, and even if they do those preorders will most likely be limited to those stores' online divisions, if the do in fact take place at all.

The Nintendo Wii is the Kyoto-based Japanese game manufacturer's successor to the GameCube. It features an innovative controller, shaped like a TV remote, that senses its position in 3D space to allow for motion-sensitive gameplay unlike anything else on the market today. For example, baseball games on the Wii can be played simply by swinging the controller like a baseball bat.
Nintendo has lost ground to competitors in recent years, with Sony and Microsoft taking the top two positions for in-home console hardware during the past decade with their Playstation 2 and XBOX consoles, respectively. However, strong sales of the company's DS handheld (including the sleeker DS Lite) have lifted the historic Japanese developer, made famous by franchises including Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon, back to prominence. DS hardware and software sales alone, led by innovative titles such as Brain Age and Nintendogs, accounted for a worldwide profit of nearly 72 percent for Nintendo during its first fiscal half.

Nintendo's Wii will compete immediately with Sony's Playstation 3 (which will arrive two days before in U.S. and Japanese stores but faces delays in other countries until March due to supply issues) and Microsoft's XBOX 360 (which has been on the market for a year) when it launches on November 19th.