Find A Wii Now

So, you’re trying to find a Wii console, find a Wii Fit or Find Wii games. Don’t you wish it was as easy as walking into your nearby store, paying for it and walking back out? Unfortunately, the Wii entertainment system is so popular, that it may seem sometimes that it is impossible to find a Wii – especially if you are trying to find a Wii Fit.

According to Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, this year will be another difficult one in which to find a Wii. In a recent interview, Fils-Aime said, “I can tell you on the record, we won’t be able to meet demand this holiday season.”

After searching the web to see what other people were up to on their sites, I actually found a few that were trying to charge for the following readily-available or common sense information. Hopefully, the following tips will ensure that you are able to find a Wii and that you are able to buy a Wii at the best possible price …

There are two main ways you can go about trying to find a Wii. You can hope to find a Wii by calling or stopping by a variety of retail stores or you can definitely find a Wii online. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, which I’ll discuss below:

Find a Wii at a Retail Store:

In these times of economic uncertainty, saving a dollar is first and foremost on the minds of many people. If you manage to find a Wii console, Wii fit or popular Wii game such as Guitar Hero at a local store, you will more than likely save a little bit of money. Of course, if saving money is your only goal, maybe you should not be trying to buy a Wii in the first place!

Time is also a factor. You can spend an entire day trying to find a Wii at area stores, only to return home empty handed, exhausted and wrought with frustration. I wrote about my horrible experience trying to randomly find a Wii in my post, “Trying To Find A Wii – SOLD OUT!” Since then, I have amassed a variety of tips that could help in your search to find a Wii at a retail outlet. I wish I would have thought of them at the time! They are as follows:

Get on the phone: Don’t just hop in your car and drive around to stores, randomly trying to find a Wii. You can cover a lot more ground on the phone. Call any and all of the following stores (assuming they are all available in your market): Wal-Mart, Target, Toys R Us, Circuit City, Best Buy as well as KB Toys and GameStop.

When you are trying to find a Wii on the phone, don’t just ask if they have the Wii product of your choice in stock, but ask them when they are expecting more in if they are currently unavailable. If you can’t get a reliable answer (99% of the time, the employee will have no clue), find out what days and times they normally get shipments in. On these days, you can try calling but, in this case, I would recommend driving to the store and arriving when their shipments come in.

Use the Schmooz: The best way to find a Wii, is to have a friend at the store alert you when they receive them. If you don’t know anyone at the retail stores, it’s time to lay on the charm. Strike up a conversation with an employee and get to know them. If you are friendly and not a whiney pain in the neck, you might even persuade them to give you a call when a Wii shipment comes in!

Try a Tracking Service: There are three major online services that purport to track inventories at major retailers. You can check current inventories and even set up E-Mail or phone notifications for when a Wii becomes available. Although they can certainly help in your search to find a Wii, tracking services aren’t always accurate or free and often misreport the facts in order to support their own selling agendas. Since Wii systems and components have been known to fly off of shelves within minutes, you can hardly blame them for the accuracy of their reporting, however. The three best tracking services you can use to find a Wii are:

http://wiitracker.com/

http://www.nowinstock.net/wii/

http://www.outtastock.com/wii/

Find a Wii Online:

They say that time is money, so you need to decide what your time is really worth. How much are you paid per hour at your job? (Of course we all know that we are worth far more than that, but it’s at least a starting point in determining how much time you want to waste trying to save a few bucks.)

It is certainly far easier to find a Wii online than it is to find a Wii at your local retail store. I had great success in finding a Wii online and wrote about it in my article, “Trying To Find A Wii Online – We Finally Found One!“ You will need to pounce on opportunities as they become available, however. I have a funny feeling that the price you see today that looks expensive, will seem like a bargain in days to come!

Whether you are trying to find a Wii console, find a Wii Fit or find Wii games, the Buy Wii tab at the top of this page is an excellent place to look if you would like to buy Wii consoles, games or components. It lists the places where you are most likely to find a Wii.

I hope the preceding tips, suggestions and links are a big help in your quest to find a Wii. Whether you are trying to find a Wii for yourself or a loved one, somebody will certainly be happy when they begin their adventure into the wonderful world of Wii!

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At first I was content just to find a Wii console. Then, I was excited when I actually placed my order and was able to buy a Wii bundle with Wii Fit. I tracked it every step of the way as my Wii made its way from place to place via Fed Ex Ground. Then, the greatest sound in the world happened; the doorbell rang.

Woo hoo, my Wii finally arrived! I could hardly wait to open it up. My wife, Karen, made me wait until she got home from work, though. I love playing games as much as the next guy, but I think Karen has us all beat.

When she finally came through the door, we started tearing into the box immediately. “What’s this for?” Karen asked, holding up the Sensor Bar.

“Beat’s the heck out of me. Maybe it reads brainwaves or something,” I joked.

This is the game we play whenever we get something new. Karen always wants to dive right in and start pushing buttons. I like to take my time and read about things first.

“Why is one of the remote controls different than the other one?” she asked next.

I don’t know why she thinks I instinctively know the answers to these kinds of things. I often just make up my answers. “One’s for left handed people,” I told her.

“You liar,” she said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. Like I said, we’ve played this game a few times before and she knows my moves by now.

Karen knew I wouldn’t be happy until I had read the instructions and she needed to change after a long day at work. She headed upstairs singing, “I hope you have it all set up by the time I come back down.”

“Oh, and, don’t start playing it without me,” she warned, as she disappeared from sight.

This was going to be another one of those situations where I would only have time to read the setup instructions. I laid out the parts, making sure every thing was there. It was simple enough to set up; it’s just a computer, after all.

I loved the fact that the Wii console came with batteries. The hardest part of setting up practically any electronic game in my house is finding where Karen keeps the batteries. I swear she moves them around every month just to keep me guessing!

I was just popping the batteries in the Wii remote when Karen came down the stairs, lighting up with anticipation. “Is it ready? Can we play now?” she asked eagerly.

“I’m just popping the batteries in now,” I told her, “and I didn’t even need your help finding them this time.” (Of course, I didn’t tell Karen the Wii came with batteries. I take my small victories when I can!)

When I was trying to find a Wii console, the only way I could do it was to bundle it with a Wii Fit (which I was going to buy anyway). The bundle also included Wii Sports, which I popped into the console, eagerly anticipating the first game. First we had to crate Mii’s, though.

For those of you who have yet to find a Wii console and aren’t hip to the Wii lingo, Mii’s are characters that you design yourself to use as players in the various games. This might have been Karen’s favorite part. She giggled constantly as we tried to create cartoon images of ourselves.

Then, we decided to make two additional characters that were a little more creative. She designed a cat woman and I made a pig man. Karen was laughing hysterically by now.

While she was putting the finishing touches on the cat woman Mii, I was busy scanning the section of the Wii manual dealing with Internet setup. I was pleasantly surprised to find a Wii can automatically detect a wireless router in your house. At least it said so in the manual.

I’ve grown skeptical over the years of products that claim to be able to communicate with existing devices so; needless to say, I was expecting some trouble here. I was shocked when the process went seamlessly, however, and I was connected after a few simple clicks.

At last, we were ready to tackle our first Wii game.

… To be continued in my next post: “We Find Wii Sports Is Too Much Fun!”

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I wanted a Wii immediately but was quickly realizing that I was not the only one out there that felt this way. I would have to settle for the next-best thing and get one shipped to me, instead. I had returned home, knowing I could easily find a Wii on the Internet. Or, so I thought …

I checked all of the usual suspects out first: Walmart.com, Target.com, BestBuy.com, Circuit City.com and even ToysRUs.com were all “out of stock” and I couldn’t even order one. I then did a search for “find Wii” and finally had some options.

Most of the places led me to eBay auctions, however, which I hate. Half the time when I “win” an auction on eBay, I discover that I have not met the seller’s minimum. When it comes to trying to buy a Wii, I discovered this is more the rule than the exception. I watched a few auctions take place and was shocked to see that people were paying double the retail price for their winning bids. I can’t blame the sellers; however, this is how a free market supply vs. demand system works!

Instead, I was able to find a Wii by clicking on the Google ads. One of the ads took me to an Amazon.com site where I was able to find a Wii. Buy.com had slightly better prices on bundles, however. I was able to Buy a Wii Console and Buy a Wii Fit in one shot at Buy.com for about $80 more than they would have cost at a retail store if sold separately. I had already wasted far more than $80 worth of my time trying to find a Wii at the retail stores, so I leapt at the chance and ordered the bundle immediately (see “Trying to Find A Wii – SOLD OUT” and “Trying To Find A Wii On Black Friday”). I was at last able to buy a Wii without completely breaking the bank and got the Wii Fit to boot, which is what my wife really wanted to get.

If you are trying to find a Wii, I would suggest that you save yourself some time and frustration by immediately clicking on one of the sidebar ads. You’ll be able to buy a Wii quickly and can spend the time you saved having the time of your life with this fabulous new revolution in home video game entertainment. Surely your time is worth more than the little bit you’ll save by trying to get one at a retail outlet!

I spent more time checking on my shipment than doing actual work as I tracked it’s progress on Fed Ex’s site. Buy.com had free shipping and the box arrived four days after ordering it (very impressive delivery time!). I could hardly wait to set it up!

To be continued in my next post: “Not Upset By Wii Setup”

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“Crap! I better find a Wii this time,” I muttered under my breath. It was only 1:45 AM. It couldn’t possibly have been only fifteen minutes since I had last checked my watch.

It was freezing … okay, maybe it wasn’t freezing. I remember what that was like when I lived in Chicago, but for a November night in Orlando, it was ridiculously cold.

“It has to be in the low 40’s,” I told myself as I rocked back and forth, unconsciously reasoning that some sort of friction between my slightly moving body and the air would magically create newfound warmth. I tried not to let my teeth chatter; it wouldn’t look too cool. Everyone else had nice, big, warm blankets and had brought lawn chairs.

I thought I had dressed warmly enough. I had my favorite Gators sweats on under a pair of 501’s. I wore a black, hooded sweatshirt and a lined “pleather” Kentucky Wildcats jacket that I had picked up for next to nothing at Steve and Berry’s. I wasn’t a big Wildcats fan, but their logo is just so cool, I had to get the jacket.

“It’s probably the SEC gods punishing me for wearing rival schools,” I reasoned to myself. The rest of the world couldn’t see the Gators sweats underneath the jeans, but you can never get one by the gods!

“How do I get myself into these things?” I silently wondered. I had been sitting on the cold sidewalk outside of Wal-Mart for three hours. I checked my watch again and said a silent “Woo hoo!” Another five minutes had passed.

Of course, I knew why I was sitting on the sidewalk all by myself with hundreds of people. I was here to find a Wii. It was the promise I had made to my wife, knowing deep down, that it was the promise I had made to myself, too. I wrote about it in my first post, “Trying to Find A Wii – SOLD OUT!“

I had made my bed; now I had to lie in it. “Boy it would be nice to be in my warm bed,” I smiled to myself.

Ordinarily, I would have been so tired that I would have passed out on the sidewalk, using one of my Reeboks as a pillow. It was too cold, though. I know I read somewhere that if you fell asleep in freezing temperatures, you could wake up dead.

“Maybe it was in a movie,” I began to wonder, “or; perhaps, I just made the whole thing up,” I thought further. You never really know with me; even I fool myself sometimes. I know they say that if you can’t tell the difference between a dream and reality, it’s some sort of psychosis, but maybe that’s me just being paranoid. I digress …

The people around me had coolers full of food and drink; watching them eat made me hungry. I had made and wrapped up two turkey sandwiches from the wonderful turkey dinner we had just eaten eight hours ago. In the boredom of the first two hours, I had eaten them already, though.

I decided to pass my time looking at people and making up stories about them. There were the two lovebirds that I had decided were really both cheating on their spouses, the weird-looking family that I was convinced was from another planet and then there was the guy who spent the entire night on the phone.

“He has to be some kind of undercover agent,” I told myself. He switched batteries in his phone like he was popping cartridges from an automatic weapon.

“Probably an X-files or Men In Black kind of guy.” I continued in thought. “He’s watching the alien family.” That had to be it!

I continued in this vein until 3:00 AM rolled around and someone from Wal-Mart came out and started handing out numbers. I was given number 127.

“127!” I said out loud. “How the hell could I be number 127?” There were maybe forty or fifty families in front of me. The people behind me explained that a lot of the families took a number for each member of their family so that they could get as many discounted items as possible.

“This wasn’t good,” I thought. “How many of them could possibly be here to find a Wii, though?”

Two hours later my question was answered, sort of. When I got into the store, I walked calmly but with purpose over to the section where I knew I would find a Wii to buy. I remembered exactly where the empty space was where Wii consoles live their short lives in the store; I had been here just two-and-a-half weeks ago.

When I got to the glassed-in area, once again the spot where the Wii consoles should be was empty.

“Surely they still have them,” I thought. Getting the attention of the people behind the sales counter was quite a challenge. It was utter madness in the place.

When I finally got the attention of a guy named “Ismael” and told him I was trying to find a Wii console, he robotically answered, “Sorry, man; they’re all gone.” Apparently, although I had only been in the store for maybe five minutes, he had already been asked this question more than once.

“How can that be?” I asked him. “How many did you have … like, three or something?”

“No, I think we had about twenty of them,” Bob answered dismissively. He then returned his attention to the customer who was in front of him.

“It’s all the eBayers,” someone who heard me ask about the Wii consoles, grumbled.

Another guy behind him snorted, “Or the employees snatched them up before we got here!”

“Good,” I thought. “At least I’m not the only one pissed off here!”

Although it was nice to know that I wasn’t alone in my frustration to find a Wii, being in miserable company didn’t solve anything. Deciding that I wasn’t going to let more than six hours of suffering in the cold go to waste, I looked around briefly for anything cheap that I might want. I grabbed an 8 Gig thumbdrive that was on sale for just under 10 bucks and poked around, looking for anything else I might want to buy.

There were a few Wii games on sale for Black Friday specials; but, without the Wii console, what was I going to do with them? There really wasn’t anything else I was interested in, so I made my way up to the front of the store to buy the thumbdrive.

As usual, the lines to check out were long and not even close to all of the checkout counters were open. I thought about just leaving the thumbdrive behind, hightailing it out of the store, but the prospect of returning home with absolutely nothing to show for my hours of icy isolation kept me in line with the rest of the herd.

After buying the thumb drive, I walked silently to the car (I learned my lesson about verbal outbursts from the last time I tried to find a Wii but ended up empty handed). I sure wasn’t about to run around like a Wii-starved maniac again, either. It was time to turn back to the original “Plan B.”

The drive home this time was only ten minutes. Thank goodness I didn’t have to see the disappointment on my wife’s face when I returned home empty handed yet again (the thumb drive was for me and I’m sure Karen wouldn’t have dug the fact that I got something but she didn’t… it’s our secret, now).

I had no choice now. I was going to have to try to find a Wii online.

… To be continued in my next post: “Trying To Find A Wii Online“

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“Where in the world do you find a Wii Console?” I half-shouted out loud. People were looking at me with weird looks on their faces now as I headed to my car with my head held low. It had been a long day - longer than I had anticipated, for sure. I was at my wits’ end!

“Dude, have you tried to find a Wii online?” some pimply faced kid said as I began to haul myself into my car. He had a half grin/half smirk on his face, obviously having heard my outburst.

“Nah, I want one today,” I told him, frowning.

“Good luck!” he snorted, as he shrugged and shuffled away, his jeans dragging low, barely hanging onto his butt.

It was now starting to rain and I’d had enough; but, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start at the beginning …

It’s been forever since I owned a video game system. The last one I had was the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I had a ball with that NES back in the day but I eventually grew older, became responsible and couldn’t justify the time anymore for sitting around, being unproductive and … well … having fun. Then I discovered the Nintendo Wii.

When I first saw a Wii at a friend’s house, my long-lost whimsical side easily won the battle over my practical self and I knew I had to have one. The kids that were playing with the Nintendo Wii were having a ball but I was just a little too cool to say “let me give it a try!” This wasn’t just sitting around, vegging-out in a nine hour video game trance. No way; the Wii was action-packed fun!

My wife, Karen, wandered into the room where the kids were playing with the Wii a moment later. She apparently is not impaired by the “coolness” thing and was playing with the kids minutes later.

“Honey, we have to get one of these things!” she said, obviously having the time of her life. She was like a kitten in a room full of yarn. Nobody loves to play more than my wife!

Whenever Karen proclaims that we “have to” get something, it’s a done deal. When you have been married for thirteen years, you realize what battles have already been lost.

Fortunately, I had already decided the same thing, so when I told her, “Okay, if you really want one, I’ll get you one,” I had just scored major brownie points and a Wii at the same time!

My wife works on Sundays, but I don’t. These are “my days.” Usually I can be found camped out in front of the television for the duration of the day, watching football. It was November ninth, though, and the Buccaneers weren’t playing, so I figured I’d go out and find a Wii to (ahem) make my bride happy.

Unfortunately, the first place I went – Wal-Mart – didn’t have any Wii consoles. It was close-by and was the obvious first place to look. I was going to have to drive another ten miles to the Florida Mall area to find a Wii, I figured.

Since I had such “great luck” at the first Wal-Mart, I decided to give the one near the mall a go, too (I don’t know why my wife thinks I’m stubborn). Same story … no Wii consoles to be found. I asked the clerk to see if any of their stores had one. After scanning for stores with a Wii console in stock, she informed me that the only store that had one was in Daytona, and that they had just a single unit left. I’ve played this game before and was not going to drive over an hour to Daytona only to find out that their database was wrong (can anyone say employee theft?) or that someone had bought their sole remaining unit during my drive.

“This is not good;” I thought to myself, “I better hurry on over to Target and see if they have a Wii system.”

No luck at Target. After searching her system, their clerk told me that she could not find a Wii at any of Target’s stores. A sick feeling began to emerge in the pit of my stomach.

I had the same misfortune at KB Toys and the Radio Shack in the Mall as well as at the Toys R Us right next to it. I rushed across the street to Best Buy and then down the road to CompUSA (you never know!) where my fruitless search to find a Wii continued. My last stop was at Circuit City.

You know how this turned out by now. I started my Kia Rio and watched the pimply faced kid get into his black Mustang, thinking jealously how I would love to be driving that car. As I drove off toward home, my mind began to drift; I could see it now …

“Whose Mustang is that in the driveway?” my wife would say when she returned home from work.

“Oh … I didn’t tell you? I couldn’t find a Wii anywhere. I did find a great deal on a convertible, though.”

It sucks when you get yelled at - especially in your fantasies!

I was a couple of miles down the road wondering how I had gotten that far without really paying attention to where I was going. When I got home, I would have to see if I could find a Wii online. It was about a twenty minute drive back home; as tired as I was, my mind began to wander again.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had come up with a new plan. I remembered Black Friday was coming up and was pretty sure that I could not only find a Wii, but could get a good deal on one, too!

… To be continued in my next post: “Trying To Find A Wii On Black Friday“

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Just click on the Find A Wii Now Comments link here or at the top right of this post. I’d love to hear your stories!

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