As I've pointed out in another thread, it takes Nintendo approximately 5 months to adjust production levels. Nintendo could buy new production today, and it would inrease their production for May -- would you be willing to bet a lot of money right now that Wii supply and demand will be negative in May at 1.8 million units per month?
Nintendo has been facing the same problem all year. In January it seemed like they'd need increased supply, but who knows how much. And they would be increasing supply for May. Would they meet demand by then with the current supply? It looks like by April or so they really got the wheels rolling on getting a lot of new production because they've managed to increase it for ~September.
Either way, it's hard to handle this level of production if you don't own your own facilities. Increasing production by approximately a million units a month is huge and very risky.
That said, yes, Nintendo blew it. They needed to gamble more aggressively, and they needed to get 1.8 million per month on shelves for a much larger part of the year. It would be awesome if Nintendo could meet demand in the US, but no one as any idea how much demand there is in the US other than "a lot right now." I wouldn't consider this a missed opportunity, but a series of missed opportunities. Fortunately for Nintendo, they way they positioned themselves this generation there will be many more opportunities.
