Shopping for a Nintendo Wii

Good luck. Here it is two months after the holidays and it's very tough to keep the thing in stock. For the unintiated, the Wii uses a wireless controller that manages to translate the players' motions onto the screen. So unlike other videogame consoles, you're actually moving around to bowl, play tennis or whatever. It's generating lots more buzz than the Sony PlayStation 3 (borne out by Sony's earnings results), and while there's still some question whether the Wii is just a fad, Barron's Eric Savitz is having a heck of a time getting one for his son.

Yesterday, in a modest panic, my wife reminded me that our oldest son’s birthday is this week; he has been lobbying for a Wii for eons. So I jumped into action, scouring the Web for any clues on where I might find one. There are couple of services that automate this process, spidering retail sites and sending you an alert whenever they become available. Amazon (AMZN) had them for sale for a few brief minutes yesterday, but not long enough for me. A few other sites have them for sale, but only if you purchase an enormous pile of software to go along with it. In one bundle offered by Walmart.com (WMT), you had to pick seven additional titles; so the $249 Wii became something north of $700 once you added in tax and shipping. Seems like criminal behavior to me. And the price-gouging mom-and-pop retailers on eBay selling them for dramatically above the suggested retail price fall into the same dishonorable camp.

I just checked the Nintendo Wii Tracker and most retailers are out of stock. But it seems to be hit and miss, so keep trying. This is obviously great news for Socal's two big videogame publishers, THQ and Activision, which are churning out Wii versions of their titles.