The highly anticipated Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii is set to be released this week in Japan. Unfortunately it seems that Japan is in position to suffer major shortages throughout the rest of January and into February. According to Nintendo, local retailers are expected to get a mere 25% of anticipated stock, while importers such as Play-Asia say that they only received enough copies to fulfill 15% of preorders.
Abundant shortages were expected when this heavy hitting (literally) Wii title finally got to shelves, with the previous iteration of the series being the best selling game on the GameCube. However, shortages in this amount were completely unexpected. Consumers desperate to getting this game no matter what the cost can look forward to battling it out on eBay while inevitably slowly emptying their pockets.
Nevertheless, SSBB is dated for March 9th in the US if certain retailers are to be believed. Unless you’re willing to play an imported and, possibly, more expensive version of the game, it looks like you’re going to have to wait it out like the rest of us.
