I've been excited all day today thinking of that joyous moment when I get to go home after work and pick-up the pre-ordered Wii Fit. So I arrived at Best Buy and went to the Nintendo section only to be perplexed as I didn't see any Wii Fit on the shelves. I asked a nearby employee for the item and he says, "They're not available until May 21...". I felt shocked and confused, looked at the pre-order sheet that I have saying...
"available May 19, 2008".
I showed it to the Best Buy employee and said, "See... it says it's available today!" He then showed me the date on the Best Buy website but I told him that showing me that does not help... I demanded for the Nintendo official release date. He went to the Nintedo website and could not find the date for the release of the Wii fit and decided to go talk to his manager. He came back apologizing about the wrong published date, and that it (Wii Fit) won't actually be available until the 21st of May. I then started to rant about not seeing anything about it online... and that all I saw all day is about Wii Fit's release for today.
So I walked out of Best Buy and decided to check other stores, thinking that just maybe, it was just Best Buy. Wal-mart is nearby so I went there... same thing. They even had a note on the glass door shelving apologizing for the misleading availability date of the Wii Fit (as they advertised it as one of the best gifts for Mom for mother's day). On the other hand, the Wal-mart ad stated that Wii Fit "ships on May 19, 2008". I asked the electronics employee at Wal-mart, and she said that the date was a "misprint". I thought, wow... if that date was a misprint, then it has been a misprint for all the other sites from all the months dating back in 2007.As far as I know, the day that Wii Fit had been dated for release, it was all over sites such as CNET, USA Today, IGN and other internet game sites and blogs. Most of these websites stated the UK/Europe release for April 25 and the US release on May 19. I remember being upset that we (US) were getting it last compared to everyone else.
So when I got home, I went and searched for the official release date of Wii Fit, and I could not find the accurate date. Even the Wii Fit portion from the Nintendo website only mentions of the Wii Fit Launch party in NYC on May 19, 2008. I got frustrated not finding the facts, so I called Nintendo directly. I ended up talking to really helpful representative named "Ed". He informed me that the May 19 release date is partially true because the Wii Fit is released on such date but only exclusively to New York, and that the rest of US will get it on May 21. I asked him where in the Nintendo website does it indicate such information... and he showed me this. The article does say it along the bottom portion that,
"Wii Fit is available today exclusively at the Nintendo World store in New York, and will be at retail stores across the country May 21."
While it may be true that Nintendo intended May 19 release date to be exlusive to NYC, then why didn't Nintendo bother correcting the media all these months of anticipation? Apparently, even Nintendo rep "Ed" didn't know why... he told me that they (I am assuming the phone operators) were just informed about this.
So instead of supposedly enjoying the goodness of the Wii Fit on this Monday night, I ended up blogging about it. Overall I was disappointed, but then it's only 2 days, then I'll be able to get the Wii Fit (hopefully). I still don't believe that all this time, the release date was massively wrong. I mean... almost everybody thought it was for today!
