Why Nintendo has been "slow" to increase production.

[Ninjabread Man]

Stever89 said:

I'd also like to point out, which has been said multiple times in various threads, that increasing production is not as easy as flipping a switch. And much harder than flipping a REALLY big switch. It takes time, they have to make sure enough parts (CPU, GPU, etc) are made, and somethings that means those who make those parts have to increase production, which might take some time (if not more). They have to have the extra plants, and if needed, have to buy plants, and I doubt there are many empty manufacturing plants out there waiting to be used. Those plants have to be set up, at any rate. Contracts have to be made. It's a very time consuming, and costly, process, which one doesn't simply run into blind folded.

This.

Nintendo have to liase with ATI and IBM as they manufacture the GPU and CPU respectively.

On factories, quite a lot of them are specialised (for instances sweets, clothes) and so perhaps Nintendo has to build them themselves due to this.

At 1.8/month lets have a look at how much Nintendo will be making over the coming years taking 20m as the amount sold by year end 2007.

 

Year End	Amount Produced	Lifetime to Date Produced
2008	21.6	41.6m
2009	21.6	63.2m
2010	21.6	84.8m
2011	21.6	106.4m
2012	21.6	128.0m

That's a lot of units, but the true problem is whether or not demand will continue to outstrip supply, and how long it will do so. Should Nintendo up production now in order to take advantage of the crazy demand - building new factories and having to shut them down if demand dives (a costly procedure)? Will demand remain at whatever incredible rate it is at the moment, or even increase, making the numbers in the table above look conservative?

There are so many factors Nintendo need to take into consideration, and they will be deliberating them right now.