Nintendo of America front man Reggie Fils-Aime was recently on CNBC pimping many of his company's wares, including the newly price-dropped Wii and their portable, the DSi. In the interview on Nintendo's holiday lineup, Reggie was asked who his biggest retail customer is, and he pointed to Bentonville, Arkansas based retailer Walmart.
"On a retail basis, certainly from my region, which is Canada, U.S, Latin America, Walmart is my biggest customer," Fils-Aime said.
That's surprising. I know Walmart is the world's largest retailer, but as for Nintendo wares, I would have picked Best Buy or GameStop over Walmart. Over 2.2 million units have been sold, and apparently Walmart played a big part in that.
Speaking of Walmart, although not games related, I caught CNBC's "The New Age of Walmart" documentary last night. This is their second doc on the company, and this one's not as negative as the last. Very interesting. The best one is still Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t! episode on the company -- they go after the people that hate the company for no reason.
[via Joystiq]
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
5:00 PM on 10.06.2009
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@Dale> "That's surprising. I know Walmart is the world's largest retailer, but as for Nintendo wares, I would have picked Best Buy or GameStop over Walmart. Over 2.2 million units have been sold, and apparently Walmart played a big part in that."
Considering that Wal-Mart has roughly four times the amount of Brick-and-Mortar locations that Best Buy does, it seems like Wal-Mart would be the most obvious choice - especially considering that as far as consoles go, the Wii would be considered a low-end electronics product, which is Wal-Mart's electronics bread-and-butter.
I was surprised to learn that there are over 5,000 GameStop locations though!
Of course, it's always been that way between Nintendo and Wally World, I bet. Folks buy everything there.
Or, at least the folks who are too lazy to look elsewhere, don't know better or don't care.
Also I hate Wal-Mart, and do everything I can to not step foot in there.
Walmart's financial situation makes Target and Best Buy look like a struggling businesses. So yes, I totally believe that Walmart is more important to Reggie than Gamestop.
For the record, got mine at Toys R Us back when it was still uncommon to see systems in the wild.
Walmart is also the biggest customer for all the big publishers - EA, Activision, and so on. No one particularly likes it. But as long as the overwhelming majority of consumer shop at big brick and mortar stores, that's the way it'll be.