News Blog

Amazon.com this week offered its customers additional allocations of Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Sony Corp.’s Playstation 3 before year-end.

Wii dropped to U.S. retail on Nov. 19 and PS3 was released to retail on Nov. 17.

The internet retailer offered additional inventory of each next-generation console on Fri., Dec. 29. It disclosed to customers the day prior that each console would be available for purchase between 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST.

The in-demand items quickly sold out by 11 a.m. with many customers out of luck after initial sales.

Previously Amazon offered its customers allocations of Wii and PS3 through a random drawing called Amazon Customer’s Vote.

Nintendo expects to ship 4 million Wii consoles by the end of the year. The motion-sensing phenom has wowed critics and holiday buyers with casual and core game offerings.

Meanwhile the PS3 has trickled back into inventory after an initial sell out. Despite productions woes for the Blu-ray equipped console, Sony expects to maintain a shipment target of 2 million units by year-end.