Coloured Nintendo Wiis: Pure Rumour

There's a really good story doing the rounds at the moment regarding coloured Wiis and their inventory control over at Target in the USA - well, SuperTarget.

Here's what Nintendo told SPOnG this afternoon - and it's pretty definitive...



As we always say, just because it's not been announced doesn't mean it's not happening. After all, you could plan your birthday party with your best mate well in advance of announcing it to your other acquaintances.

However, let's agree that nothing has yet been 'announced' for anywhere in the world. Let's also say that we'd usually expect coloured Ninty product to hit Japan first - it's sort of tradition, see like this as well.

The original story - let's give credit where it's due - is marked as 'Rumour' and comes from GoNintendo. It concerns Target's unique product code for coloured Wiis and the fact that when the barcode was run recently up came the words, "Wii White" instead of "Wii Console". This, apparently indicates that coloured Wiis will also be on the system too (Flip over to the original at the link at the bottom of this story).

Let's say, however, that - despite what our caption to the official Nintendo picture (above right) indicates - we are expecting the coloured Wiis promised by Nintendo - and we're expecting them this year.

Too all intents and purposes then - with Nintendo's denial in front of us - we could have stopped there. But we got curious... what follows is more to stop anybody else following dead-ends.

The story was about Unique Product Codes (UPCs). So, we turned to the very unofficial UPC Database and had a look. We came up with the following UPCs that could possibly indicate coloured Wiis.

0714265148451 WiiSCBLK-WiiSCBLK (Black?)
0714265148468 WiiSCBLU-WiiSCBLU (Blue?)
0714265148475 WiiSCPNK-WiiSCPNK (Pink?)
0714265148482 WiiSCPUR-WiiSCPUR (Purple?)
0714265148499 WiiSCSKY-WiiSCSKY (Sky Blue?)
0714265148505 WiiSCWHT-WiiSCWHT (White?)

The UPC quoted in the Target story for a white Wii was '00492072500012' - nothing like the 0714265148505 quoted by the UPC database.

We looked again and discovered that, again on the UPC Database "Nintendo Wii Game Console" was also listed as '045496880019' , with a last modified date of "Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:04:02". Mmmm... but this was also, nothing like the GoNintendo tip off.

We also saw '0045496580018' listed as 'Wii' with an update of 'Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:57:19'. We kept looking and we found, 'Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:59:55, Wii Console'... with the number '0045496880057'.

"Hold on, we thought... something is amiss here. What's the UPC manufacturer code for Nintendo? Well, the "Uniform Code Council (UCC) code?"

We looked, and: "NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC" is '0045496'. The same seven digits as the prefixes for the other Wiis we had found. But not the same prefixes as the Target UPC of '00492072500012' - and also not of the coloured Wiis that we thought we found (0714265).

That last reference, according to UPC Database, turned out to be "DBS RECORDS" - apparently a garage rock label.

The Target prefix for the Wii-White ('0049207') turns out to be, 'KOLLER CRAFT PLASTIC PRODUCTS' - 'Koller-Craft is one of the oldest plastic molders in the midwest' - Mmmm, we're sure Koller makes excellent products, we just don't think they are likely to be Wiis, although they could be Wii casings if Nintendo has moved its manufacture. We're checking into that.

So, we thought some more and asked the following:

1) Is the UPC Database - which is unofficial - wrong about its code numbers and manufacturer references? Possible.

2) If UPC is correct, does Target in the USA use its own internal UPCs which have nothing to do with those referenced by UPC Database? Again possible.

3) What music does DBS release?

We're looking into all of those. Until we get confirmations however, we're going to have to keep this as 'Unannounced' or as Nintendo stated to us (and GoNintendo rightfully headlined), "Pure rumour and speculation'.

^{Source: GoNintendo}