7,000 Stolen Nintendo Consoles Still Missing, Turned Out to be Wii Us

Detectives have located the vehicles in which the systems were stashed inside and transported and here’s another piece of good news, they weren’t even Wiis —they were Wii Us!

[1upgamer99]

I read about this weeks ago on Yahoo news. They always knew they were Wii U's. http://www.ign.com/articles...
This is dated December 19th. Stating they were Wii U's. I never heard they were just Wii.

[3GenGames]

Pretty much every gamer article said they were normal Wii's. I pointed it out in a few articles that wiis shouldn't cost nearly $400, lol.

[PopRocks359]

Hopefully they catch the perps. No manufacturer deserves to have their merchandise stolen.

[Cam977]

Nobody does. Theft is wrong and I hope the perpetrator's crime catches up with them very soon.

[Ezz2013]

they should assign Inspector Clouseau to catch them

[ALLWRONG]

They have insurance. Who the hell cares?

[1upgamer99]

3 million dollars turned into insurance. The effect of that is not just oh well, rates go up, premiums go up. If you drive a car and you have an accident, sure the insurance pays, but so do you in the long run. I am guessing you are young.

[skipper]

that comment is just ALLWRONG....

[PopRocks359]

@ALLWRONG

Does that mean the thieves should get off with nothing? No, I think they should be tried and properly convicted. That's the point here.

[dredgewalker]

I wonder if Nintendo can track them if these items were used online. Since they also have serial numbers in them they should also have mac addresses that are paired with it. Though I have doubts that Nintendo would implement such a security feature with a console. Anyway I hope they get their stolen units back and catch the thieves.

[rainslacker]

You can be almost certain that Nintendo has some way to track these systems if they get used online. Serial numbers are hard coded into the bios, and likely uploaded along with the MAC address when you make an account. Nintendo would have records of which device's got which MAC address for this very purpose. It's commonplace on every piece of hardware sold in the last 15 years.

Whether or not they actively decide to pursue these people is another issue, as the ones using it aren't likely to be the ones that stole it. More than likely it would be up to the insurance company to do that, since when they pay out the units become their property.

[GreenRanger]

I hope they catch the scoundrel who stole those Wii Us.
Off Topic: Wii Us! Wii Us! Come on, people, i've got Wii Us for sale over here. Straight off the factory floor! I bought these for €1000 each but i'm giving them away for €250. Wow, what a steal! Get 'em while they're hot. You won't find a bargain like this ever again! Quickly now, before the cops come.

[PopRocks359]

Damn, Rita's really losing her touch if all she's doing is having you sell stolen game consoles.

[dredgewalker]

Have you ever seen a Power Ranger getting paid to defend the world? :)

[sprinterboy]

Is that shipped to retail or sold in hardware sales lol

[strigoi814]

i wonder if this will count as sales?

Well i guess it will like MS on their RROD console and burger king and oprah giveaways..lolz

[crazy_man]

In this case, if they were added to anything, it would only be shipped numbers as they were in the middle of being transported.

In stuff like contests they are indeed counted as sold to customer cause the contest host actually buys them full price (unless its a promotion sponsored or co-sponsored by Nintendo).

Now in the case of RROD like with the early Xbox 360's, if it was before July 2007 then you were kinda screwed. After that they started selling them with 3 year warranty, with the problem pretty much gone by 2010. Repaired or replaced consoles most likely were not counted as sales unless someone actually payed full price for the replacement (via lacking warranty).

[ALLWRONG]

Sorry was having a 2007 flashback :P now back to good ole 2013.

[FarCryLover182]

That's over 2 million USD!!! Crazy.

[Sp1d3ynut]

This is why they should never count "shipped" consoles in sales reports. These 7000 were "shipped", but will never make it to retail, even if recovered.

[rainslacker]

It's the only accurate way to track sales though. There are too many different vendors and territories to make it easy otherwise. Even NPD doesn't track all retailers. It's kind of like Neilson, in that it takes a sample of what's sold and then extrapolates from that, although they are pretty accurate for the most part.

Generally a retailer isn't going to order more than they can sell anyways, so the differences in numbers would be minimal, especially considering that we're talking about 10's of millions of units. 7000 units of 4 million sold is only 0.175%