James Delahunty
18 Feb 2007 16:05
Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime, spoke in an interview at last week, explaining and apologizing for the shortages of Wii and DS Lite consoles. "We apologize that it continues to be a difficult problem to get your hands on [a Wii]," he said. "The fact is, we manufactured 4 million Wii consoles by the end of the calendar year."
He continued: "Our challenge was getting them not only into our warehouses and then into warehouses of our retailers, but there is some handling of the consoles in terms of putting the "Wii Sports" disc in. That whole inventory chain is what prevented us from selling all 4 million that had been produced."
He revealed that production for the Wii is at 1 million units per month and another ramp up will be coming soon. Shortages of new consoles are expected for some months after the initial launch, but the Nintendo DS Lite handheld console has also been in short supply despite being on the market for a much longer time.
"We put everything in the marketplace that we humanly could by December 25th. But from December 26th until mid-January, we were effectively out of stock." Fils-Aime said. "It's going to be tight probably until March. And then as we gear up for the April 22nd launch of 'Pokémon Diamond' and '[Pokémon] Pearl,' things should certainly open up at that point."
Source:
MTV