Wii Australian Launch: Harvey Norman not included
There is definitely at least one place – or chain of stores, in this case – in Oz where Aussies will NOT get their Wiis this Christmas: the Harvey Norman chain of consumer electronics stores. Nintendo Public Relations Manager, Vispi Bhopti, says this:
They are telling the market that we are in discussions with them but this is not true. We don’t like their terms or the way they operate and we are refusing to do business with them.
We’re not residents of the Land Down Under ourselves so we’re unaware of Harvey Norman’s business practices regarding this (our Australian readers are free to instruct us on what they know about this). In the Smarthouse News article that reported this, the Managing Director of JB Hi Fi (probably a competitor to Harvey Norman) says,
“There (sic) bullying is coming back to bite them. This is one product that Harvey Norman wanted and I believe that a lot of vendors will take note of what Nintendo have done in refusing to accept Harvey Norman’s terms”.
Two of the comments to this story’s appearance on Codename Revolution also noted this negative opinion of Harvey Norman, which go as far as to accuse the retailer of being “Nintendo bashers” and “absolute b*****ds.” Like we said, not being Australian residents, we honestly don’t know the backstory. But for some of us, this is the first time in recent memory we’ve seen corporate muscles being flexed like this.
There is definitely at least one place – or chain of stores, in this case – in Oz where Aussies will NOT get their Wiis this Christmas: the Harvey Norman chain of consumer electronics stores. Nintendo Public Relations Manager, Vispi Bhopti, says this:
They are telling the market that we are in discussions with them but this is not true. We don’t like their terms or the way they operate and we are refusing to do business with them.
We’re not residents of the Land Down Under ourselves so we’re unaware of Harvey Norman’s business practices regarding this (our Australian readers are free to instruct us on what they know about this). In the Smarthouse News article that reported this, the Managing Director of JB Hi Fi (probably a competitor to Harvey Norman) says,
“There (sic) bullying is coming back to bite them. This is one product that Harvey Norman wanted and I believe that a lot of vendors will take note of what Nintendo have done in refusing to accept Harvey Norman’s terms”.
Two of the comments to this story’s appearance on Codename Revolution also noted this negative opinion of Harvey Norman, which go as far as to accuse the retailer of being “Nintendo bashers” and “absolute b*****ds.” Like we said, not being Australian residents, we honestly don’t know the backstory. But for some of us, this is the first time in recent memory we’ve seen corporate muscles being flexed like this.
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