In Response to the Top 10 Video Game Conspiracies. Re: Scarcity

[Veder Juda]

johnappseed84 said:

Veder Juda said:
If you increase hardware production, what do you do when demand is satisfied and sales drop? Now you have extra production capacity that goes unused, and is costing you money for just sitting there doing nothing. Nintendo certainly learned this lesson hard during the GameCube era.

Also, the Wii is made of lots of little components; in order to increase production, every component must also increase production, which requires coordinating with lots of parts manufacturers. The ability to increase production, is limited by the one component in tightest supply; a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

What is the component in the tightest supply for Wii?

I don't know, I meant it in a general term; that if there's a shortage of even one component, then Nintendo can't produce more Wiis than supply for that sparse component.  Also, a shortage doesn't mean a component isn't available, but that Nintendo needs to arrange for more of that component to come their way; and Nintendo has to do that with all of their parts manufacturers at the same time, which can take months to coordinate.

It's also possible, that all of the components can be easily gotten, and the real reason is the first one I gave, that Nintendo doesn't want to get stuck with excess production capacity that sits idle.