Shortages of the Nintendo Wii console will continue until the end of March in the US after the company was caught by surprise by December’s record sales.
In an interview at Nintendo’s Media Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Reggie Fils-Aimé (pictured), president of Nintendo of America, told me Nintendo had been “hand-to-mouth” in supplying retailers with product in January and February after 3.8m Wiis were sold in the US in December.
“On the Wii hardware side, we are back to a situation where demand is exceeding supply and we’re going to be in that situation through the end of March,” he said.
“You can’t sell 3.8m units in one month without that suction of demand pulling product through the distribution channel.”
Mr Fils-Aimé said Wiis were selling out as soon as they were put into stores and software had also been in short supply.
“Wii Fit Plus with its balance board [accessory] has been out of stock in January and February – the consumer has been in this health resolution mode and all of the inventory we could put out in the marketplace sold through.”
The executive said that despite a $50 price cut and some strong software titles launched last autumn, management had been surprised at the level of sales over the holiday period for the Wii, three years after its launch.
“It obviously caught us a little bit off-guard and we’re rapidly trying to rectify the situation,” he said.
Nintendo sold 9.6m Wiis in the US in 2009, with December being its biggest sales month ever. However, a 31 per cent fall-off in January sales led analysts to speculate that Nintendo was suffering supply problems.
Nintendo sold 11.2m of its dual-screen handheld consoles in the US in 2009 and Mr Fils-Aimé said he had “very high expectations” for the latest version of the DS – the DSi XL - launching in March.
The executive was confident Nintendo could maintain its leading position in consoles with software titles such as Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort and Super Mario Bros continuing to sell “exceptionally well, while being bolstered by new software launches in the coming months.
“[The situation is] much more positive than say where we were a year ago, where the momentum coming out of the holidays from a software standpoint wasn’t nearly as strong as the momentum right now.”
