Fans who couldn't wait until the recently-delayed March North America release date of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and opted to import instead might be getting another swift kick to the vital bits. Japanese game retail store Lepton is reporting that there is going to be a severe shortage of SSBB upon its release in Japan. Nintendo's initial shipment of only 300,000-400,000 units for what is sure to be a million-seller title is going to leave may fans high and dry - the store itself mentions that they're only getting 154 copies of the game in their initial shipment... out of 806 initially preordered units. Yikes! Ad we're sure they're not the only ones getting a mere fraction of their stock.
Canned Dogs has more details:
"Lepton has tried to buy the games at full price from other sources just so they can fill the preorders, but nobody as any stock. They have then managed to secure an additional 100 copies of the game at 7350 yen each, which is at a price that is even higher than the selling price of the game which is 6800 yen (they’ll be losing money with each sale).
They still do not have enough copies of the game to fill preorders."
Import retailer NCSX mentioned something similar in their Monday stock update:
"Last night, vendors in Japan warned us that there might be a shortage of [SSBB] so we're closing preorders today. If the information turns out to be erroneous, we'll accept new preorders again."
In any case, it looks like the shortage is indeed confirmed and is much more severe than we first thought. I wouldn't be surprised to see NCSX update soon to say they've also been short-shipped. Meanwhile, does anyone hanging around Akiba around the time of SSBB's release want to take pictures of hilariously inflated resale prices they see for it?
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Which reminds me--are any of the Jtor staff getting Smash Bros? We'll have to trade Friend Codes and battle each other!