For this period of the year, when the Wii demand outstripped the offer, only the lucky ones were able to receive or to offer a Wii as a Christmas gift. In this context, a good amount of Nintendo’s highly popular video gaming consoles bought from retail stores have been then sold on eBay at higher prices.

However, a small Midwest retailer called Slackers seems to have skipped the middleman and started to sell its own shipments of Wiis directly on eBay, causing quite a stir on the Web. It was Ars Technica that broke the story a week ago with a tip-off from an employee, who reportedly claimed that all the company’s Wii shipments were making it to eBay, where they were sold for $499.99. However, records from Slackers’ eBay store seemed to bear this out, although a Wii was priced only $399.99.

Just a few hours after news spread on the Web, another employee confirmed Slackers’ practice through an email to Wired Magazine’s Game|Life blog.

Pressed by this scandal, the retailer’s president, Kurt Jellinek, eventually confirmed that its small company had sold Wiis on eBay for $399.99, but he also tried to show that Slackers was not greedy, it was just trying to stay afloat.

Through this move, Slackers broke Nintendo’s strict enforcement of $249 retail price on its Wiis and might suffer serious consequences.