Reggie Fils-Aime, the anti-Wii bundler

Wii bundlesNintendo of America president Reggie FIls-Aime and I share a nuber of redeeming traits. We both are able to turn coal into diamonds using nothing but brute strength and our fists, for example (related note: Merry Xmas, babe!). We can also affect weather patterns worldwide using nothing but the white hot intensity of our personalities, which burn with the combined heat of a thousand suns. Oh, and we both hate console bundles.

We especially the ones that are ocasionally — OK, incessantly — forced upon us by retailers see consoles like the Wii as the incredibly popular moneymakers that they are.

I’m not going to point any fingers, but this happens on a pretty wide scale across the video game spectrum. However, with the Wii still as popular as ever (November was recently renamed Wiivember 360), it’s been magnified ten-fold to the where some retailers, say the ones that specialize in selling and buying back video games, offer Wii bundles that rival even the PS3’s exhorbitant price tag. It’s not something Nintendo is too fond of, Reggie says.

“Retailers have already been given feedback that we are not big fans of that. We think it masks some of the price advantage we have versus our competition and, frankly, the consumer should decide what they want,” Fils-Aime said.

A pretty pillow-packed threat. It was somewhat veiled, even. Reggie pulled no punches after that quote, however, opting instead to go straight for retailers’ vugulars (i.e., their wallets).

Asked if Nintendo had threatened such retailers with fewer Wii shipments, Fils-Aime said only that the company carried a lot of weight as maker of one of the most highly sought items this holiday season. “We don’t have to remind retailers of the strength we have right now. We are simply making an observation and that reinforces our point quite nicely with retailers,” Fils-Aime said.

Part of me agrees with Reggie, but then again another part of me knows that Nintendo wouldn’t have had to say such things in the first place if they had ironed out these blasted supply chain issues by now.