Wii Shortages Will Continue Says Nintendo

Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate affairs (and apparent GameCube executioness) Perrin Kaplan, has said that we should expect Wii shortages to last for the foreseeable future. This comes nearly five months into the Wii's lifespan.

Speaking in a podcast^† about the Wii's availability, Kaplan said, “There is a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of working on what we are producing and the numbers continue to rise, but the product is so very popular that we may see the situation last for some time.”

Despite Kaplan's statement, come as figures apparently leaked from the UK's videogame statistics provider, Chart-Track, seem to suggest that the Wii has been shipped in large quantities over Easter.

25,000 Wiis were sold last week, outdoing the PS3 in its third UK week on sale by 8,000 units. It would seem, then, that the Wii's short supply has little to do with low production levels.

So what can Nintendo do about it? Not a lot, apparently. “We are at absolute maximum production and doing everything we can,” said Kaplan. “People are being really diligent about working with retailers to locate one but we are cognisant of the fact that a lot of fans are not able to get their hands on one yet.

“We are asking them to be patient and to know that we are working on this as fast as we can.”

Kaplan's comments mirror those of Nintendo's COO, Reggie Fils-Aime, when he admitted that the DS had been unavailable to US retailers for three weeks following Christmas.

Have you struggled to get your mitts on a Wii, five months into its lifespan? Let us know in the Forum.

^{† Source: GameTheoryShow}