With just seven days to go until the Wii launches in Austalia and New Zealand, the anticipation is building for the kind of lack-of-console disappointment that the US and Japan have been hogging for themselves up until now.

Kotaku has reported that Australia will be receiving 40,000 Wii’s and some retailers have had to stop taking preorders due to not being able to guarantee supply.

Also, amusing was the fun being made of Australians, particularly this rather sharp (IMO) comment:

harkonnen says:

40,000? What a croc. That bearly even koalafies as a launch. Good gReef.

Dingo.

Ha! Koalafies. Brilliant.

Sorry, back to the topic at hand…

I can report that ebgames in New Zealand is still taking preorders, but the staff member I spoke to recommended I get my preorder “sooner rather than later“. Good advice. He also told me that all the stores plan to have four or five wii’s reserved for non-preorder, so if you miss out, then go queue outside your local store, but make sure you do it at midnight, as ebgames will be doing a midnight launch.

I had earlier speculated on how many PS’3 there were going to be for Europe and Oceania, but hadn’t really given much thought to the Wii, since I don’t think anyone was expecting supply problems.

However, people are now asking how many Wii’s are going to be available for each of the territories so i thought I’d take a look at it.
Now the story is that Nintendo promised 1 million Wii’s for the North American launch, and sold 600,000. Now people are talking about shortages, so I’m assuming that there aren’t 400k units sitting on shelves, so they under-delivered.

Nintendo is promising four million globally for the various launches. If one million of that was for North America and about one third (300k) are for Japan (assuming similar split to the PS3 launch) then we’re left with 2.7 million. Given Nintendo only delivered 3/5 of their promised quantity, this actually leaves us with 1.62 mill.

In the PS3 analysis I simply broke down the numbers by population sizes. This would end up with Europe getting 1.56 million (1,566,540), Australia getting 45,360 and New Zealand getting 8,100.

Which brings us full circle back to the article that said Australia was going to get 40k which seems very likely seeing as I just worked out that they would receive 45,360.

My final thoughts seem totally unnecessary to me, but I’ll give them anyway. If you really want a Wii, get a preorder at a reputable gaming store, because I wouldn’t want to bet on there being too many Wii’s on shelfs in Oceania or Europe at launch.

Posted in Xbox 360 | | 3 Comments »

The other day I was looking for the famous Telecom Spoof Video where a Telecom Ad was redubbed with slightly offensive content aimed at bringing down everyone’s favorite target, Telecom.

I couldn’t find it, at least not at first.

I’m kind of wondering if it’s because Telecom is waging a war against any server that hosts it.  Oh well, here it is.  Enjoy.

Posted in Xbox 360 | | No Comments »

Following the interesting launch of the PS3, in which all available quantities easily sold out, replenishment shipments are trickling in.

Data is very hard to come by on the replenishment shipments, as Sony seems to be short-shipping (shipping less than what suppliers have requested) as the PS3′s can be produced.

An article from Kotaku a week ago stated that the second shipment had landed, but not surprisingly, the numbers weren’t enough to make a dent in the shortage.

One comment on the Kotaku article stated that “they get them in shipments of 2″.  This is in line with a comment from another user which stated “My GameStop got two today – just enough to cover the two preorderers that got the shaft”.

With 4500 stores, rather rudimentary maths would indicate that Gamestop had received perhaps 9000 in their share of the second shipment.

Apparently, Gamestop, has 25% market share, so we could guess that the total shipment encompassed 36,000 units.  If we assume that they sold 175,000 units in their initial release, and they keep up the pace, they should sell a further 144,000 before the end of the year, leaving them 681,000 units short of their 1 million target.

I’m not going to be putting any money on that target getting hit.

Posted in Current Events, Gaming, Playstation 3 | | No Comments »

I saw this rather interesting video the other day about how they make cocaine.

How They Make Cocaine Video

I found it fascinating that so much Coca was required to produce quite a small amount of cocaine, and all the chemicals that were used.

However, it left me wondering, “how did they come up with this process, and who was the first person to think of sniffing it?”

Thanks to everyone’s friend google. I was able to determine that cocaine was actually originally considered a medicine and generally beneficial, hence it’s inclusion in Coca Cola.

It was only over time that it’s addictiveness and other dangers became clear, and that other methods of consuming it, and more refined versions were developed.

Interesting stuff.

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Posted in Current Events | | No Comments »