Nintendo Wii kiosks to be exclusive to GameStop

According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, playable in-store kiosks for the Wii, Nintendo’s next-generation video game system, will initially be available only at GameStop retail stores. The kiosks are planned to be available before the Wii launch on 19 November, giving GameStop a monopoly on attracting Wii interest.

Nintendo could become the big winner of the upcoming holiday shopping season. The Wii was originally planned to be in a fierce competition with Sony’s PS3, but last month Sony announced that production issues forced a huge cutback of the launch allocation for North America. Only 400,000 units will be available when the PS3 is released on 17 November 17. 500,000 consoles will be launched worldwide. Nintendo claims that it will ship four million Wii units to all major countries on their respective release dates, with the bulk going to the U.S.

At least in theory, this scenario indicates that many PS3 hopefuls could end up buying a Nintendo Wii.

See the Nintendo Wii slide show here (5 pictures)

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