[quote name='iufoltzie']The retailers have no reason to hold PS3 or Wii stock back, you are going to buy the thing at full price so there is no incentive to use them as Black Friday bait. Plus most stores these days use automatic reordering. If they hold systems back they wont be getting replacements for those systems until they are sold. Finally, their profit on the systems is minor, they make their markup on the games, it undercuts their profit to not sell you a system.
Whatever store you checked was indeed sold out, or the systems they did have in the back were spoken for by employees.[/quote]
actually, if a store has a print advertisement for the system on xxx date, then yes they would need to hold it. Last year best buy had a 2nd launch of xbox 360's. It was roughly dec 15 or 18th. It was planned out in advance, and was going to be in there weekly advertisement stating they would have it, and would have xxx per store. My local best buy, where I got my 360 had them in stock at least a week before hand. If a store set up there black friday ad (which happened awhile back) that they would have xxx wii's in stock, then the store would hold it. Never question how stupid marketing departments can be. I am not saying that they will be there on black friday, I am just commenting that there would be a reason why a major B&M store would hold on stock.