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If you didn't already download the demos for WiiWare games Pokemon Rumble, World of Goo, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Dark Lord, Bit.Trip Beat and NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits, you're out of luck. Silently, Nintendo decided to remove all WiiWare demos as of January 31.
“The WiiWare demo experiment ended on Jan. 31, 2010," said a Nintendo representative to me.
WiiWare demos have been a long-demanded feature by gamers and studios publishing to Nintendo's downloadable service. Last fall, several WiiWare developers told me the the demos really helped them.
"I can say that interest definitely spiked for Bit.Trip Beat (I mean who doesn’t like free?) when the demo hit and that sales certainly picked up because of it," said Aksys Games director of marketing Gail Salamanca to me over e-mail, in a story I filed back in November.
Nintendo wouldn't elaborate on why the demos needed to come down or if the demos would return to the service at a later date. The company said this move was actually in the cards all along.
“From the start the demo program was always planned to be available for a limited time on a trial basis," continued the representative.
It's an unfortunate move for both developers and gamers.
"We are supporting this demo approach and I think all the developers will," said Over The Top Games (NyxQuest) director Robert Alvarez de Lara Siede at the time. "This is a good thing for developers and players, because now they will have more interest to connect their Wiis and visit the WiiWare shop."
WiiWare is a notoriously underrated downloadable service, but there are several reasons WiiWare doesn't receive as much attention. It's difficult for press to gain access to the content without being proactive (compared to the widely distributed download codes for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation network) and without demos, users purchasing a game on WiiWare becomes a leap-of-faith consideration. In today's economy, that's not particularly attractive. It hurts word-of-mouth.
The WiiWare demos might have been an experiment, but by all accounts, wasn't it a successful one?
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There's no question: retail has a serious lack of Wiis, once again. Yes, this is 2010, but you wouldn't be wrong in thinking it feels more like 2008. Following up on several tips over the past month about online and retail Wii “shortages,” the best we can discover is that supply is still coming in to retailers, but that demand is exceeding it — it's that same old Wii song we've heard for years.
“We're still getting in, but it's just slow. We've tried getting more from other stores in our district, but we're just selling out too fast,” a Best Buy employee told Joystiq. One GameStop manager claimed this supply issue happens every year after Christmas and estimated things will get better in mid-February. Other retailers echoed: supply is still coming in, but selling out fast. Online stores, like Amazon and NewEgg, aren't faring any better.
We've requested comment from Nintendo a couple times on this issue, but the House of Mario is staying mum. We've also requested official comment from all the major retailers, but have not received a response. If you know someone looking for a Wii, the best we can do is repeat the same advice we've been giving for years: just keep calling your local retailer and ask when it'll receive more stock.
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Lloyd Burt