Last Friday night I ended up staying up almost all night with lots and lots of stomach pain. This led to a very exhausted and nauseous and headachy Saturday. At some point I had just two of the speckled minty m&ms I’d gotten, and was incredibly nauseous all over again. That’s when my husband reminded me that he’d had to stop getting m&ms at work occasionally because if he had them for a couple of days then skipped them, he’d get splitting headaches. I stopped with the m&ms, and felt better. I wonder if it’s all those colorings they put in them, because I couldn’t see anything else in there that I don’t have in other chocolates. But normally I don’t tend to get candy bar type of chocolates with lots of colorings and such in them.
In fact, oddly enough, in this case I bought them largely because they looked cool. I wanted to photograph them, because they had this funky shimmering speckled coating. At least they did, in fact, photograph well:
Minty Goodness by ~ErrantDreams on deviantART
Luckily I felt better in time to go visit friends on Sunday, which was fun. I ended up trying out their Nintendo wii because they spoke so highly of it, even though I knew, KNEW that if I did, I’d be lost, and I really didn’t want to buy a console. Anyway, Cathy and I played bowling (way too much fun), and I had to try out billiards, fishing, and that weird game where you ride a cow and try to knock over scarecrows.
Here’s the great thing about the wii: it’s the console made for casual gamers. And as much as I love to game, when it comes to video games I consider myself a casual gamer. I have a husband. We have lots of great friends. We have hobbies that take up our time. I don’t have the time for hours and hours of gaming at a time most nights. I love the kind of silly, entertaining games that you can play for ten minutes at a time if you want, and companies have really stepped up to the plate in delivering unusual and original content for the wii.
So, yeah, I’m hooked. I really want one. But here’s the thing: it’s way past buzz-generating time, but it’s still freaking impossible to get one of the things. We tried every store in the area; no go. Not a one of them could predict when they might get them in. I finally found an online store that claimed to have one in stock (Toys ‘r us) only to have them yank it from my order because it wasn’t really in stock (of course they left all the accessories on order, so I canceled the rest of my order). The ones listed at Amazon are listed way above list price, and are being sold by merchants I’ve never heard of, so I don’t trust that they aren’t going to repackage a broken unit given the demand.
Eventually I did find a bundle at Walmart.com that was supposedly in stock; I’m still waiting to see if the order actually ships.
But seriously, there’s no logical sense to this. Why put up barriers to people’s ability to give you money? I understand that at first they do it to create buzz, even though I loathe that tactic, and frankly I try to avoid anything that’s being sold in that manner. Now, however, when the thing isn’t new, there just isn’t any point to it.
Of course, rumor has it that the lack of units is due to a production problem. I find myself very curious as to whether that’s the case.
So far this week we’ve posted two reviews, of Bertrice Small’s Dangerous Pleasures and Carole Hart’s Pleasure U. To be honest, I’m a little behind on my reviewing this week in large part because I’ve been playing around with photography and Photoshop a bit too much:
Silly Play by ~ErrantDreams on deviantART
Mint M&Ms?! I’ll have to find some.
Nintendo claims that they can’t produce more Wiis, but that seems like a ridiculous claim to be making after the problem has gone on so long. The only possibility that makes sense is that they’re intentionally limiting production to keep it a rare commodity and maintain hype.
The Wii seems like a cool console to me, but I hear that not many games really take advantage of its motion control. And it’s more expensive than it seems. The main reason to buy a Wii is Wii Sports. The game comes with the console, but you have to buy two controllers for each extra player to enjoy all the games. Add to that the Motion Plus, which I best games will probably start requiring (it enables far more accurate and versatile motion control), and the Wii costs about as much as a 360. At least the games are cheaper.
I might buy a Wii soon, but the 360 has a far better library of games for the time being. By next year, they’ll have a good number of games for casual gamers… including ones that use motion control (via the Live Vision camera accessory).
There is another option btw. Most people don;’t consider that overproduction is not profitable. So in order to maximize profitability Nintendo keeps to trying to match demand without overdoing it because overdoing it means they have too much factory power allocated, too much crap being shipped and not enough people wanting it. Granted they have no excuse for not ramping it up some more, but they err on that side of the coin rather than the side of Ford who ships too many SUV’s and then nobody wants them.
p.s. come give me ideas on my blog for the game I’m making if you please 🙂
I found the Wii at Target for retail price. I’ve seen it there a few times since. I’ve found that even games that aren’t geared directly for the motion control (Zelda) are still enhanced by it. There’s just something about being in the middle of a big sword fight, swinging your sword by waving the controller wildly in the air….
Aaron: I actually find we can get a lot of mileage out of just the Wii, Wii Play (disc plus extra controller), and a second nunchuck. I’m sure we’ll eventually get a few more games, but since the sports pack comes with training games as well as the regular games, it feels like a surprising amount of content (more than I would have expected). Doubles Tennis rocks.
Thallian: True, overproduction isn’t profitable, but they’d have to have made some seriously bad calculations to be underproducing this badly by this point!
I’ll make a note to drop by your blog… but I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. 🙂
Leah: Hi Leah! We’ll have to get your & Tony’s info to do the interactive wii stuff. 🙂 Given that it tends to be way too hot & humid for me here most of the year to go out and get proper exercise, it’s really nice to be able to go play tennis before lunch now.
Those minty MMs look gross. YUCK! I really hope more Nintendo Wiis will be produced. People are still having trouble finding them.
I bet you got sick because they were mint flavored. M&M’s should stick to what they are good at and that is the peanut ones. They have never made me sick.