Fils-Aime: Nintendo Cannot Supply Enough Wiis For Christmas

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has gone on record this weekend claiming that Nintendo will still not be able to produce enough Wiis to meet demand this coming Christmas holiday season.

"We're working very hard to make sure that consumers are satisfied this holiday, but I can't guarantee that we're going to meet demand. As a matter of fact, I can tell you on the record that we won't," Fils-Aime told an interviewer.

"What I can tell you is that typically, our inventory is lasting a day... I don't think we will know when supply crosses with demand until after the holiday season… The issue is not a lack of production. The issue is we went in with a curve that was aggressive, but the demand has been substantially more than that. And the ability to ramp up production and to sustain it is not a switch that you flick on," he added.

As to the much debated long-term future of the Wii platform, Fils-Aime noted: “You know, our hardware group, literally as soon as the system's out the door, they're already thinking about what's next. That's true for any of our platforms.”

Fils-Aime also found time to have a little pop at Halo 3 and its ability to sell platforms, opining: “Will they [Microsoft] sell a lot of software? Certainly. Will it sell hardware? I think it's an open question. Why? Because I think that the "Halo 3" consumer already has the hardware, because they're playing "BioShock" and "Crackdown" and a variety of games that are, in the end, quite similar: first-person shooter experience, multiplayer capable online. Tell me what's new?”


^{Source: San Jose Mercury News}