| greenmedic88 said: It was selling out in the US from launch until about fall of this year, so it's pretty hard to convincingly prove anything in that regard. It's still fairly safe to say that a favorable exchange rate did mean more units allocated to EU meant better profit margins for Nintendo. Whether or not that directly translated to lower sales due to lower inventory and higher demand in the US is open to debate. Demand doesn't rise due to lower inventory levels: it just means demand is not being met by current supply. Whether or not you believe that means people think this merits a run on supply (as in "oh no, they aren't making any more consoles so I must buy them all now.") is a personal interpretation. |
I (personally) think that Pachter's conspiracy theory about Nintendo's allocations is (much) more of a sign of people who are unwilling to accept the Wii really is that popular ... Even with the poor exchange rate Nintendo was still shipping a ton of console's to North America and we never really tracked a "slow" supply.
Back to the OT ... Iwata is just making the same kinds of statments that all console manufacturers make in order to prevent people from anticipating a price reduction. Unlike most manufacturers though, people are taking Iwata more seriously because there is little (demonstrated) need for Nintendo to reduce the price of the Wii being that they are still selling amazingly well and the other consoles have yet to do anything which has impacted their sales.
