In brief, the weak U.S. dollar is largely to blame as consoles sold in EU markets and Japan are more profitable for Nintendo. It may also explain why the recent price drop for the 360 in the EU has been more of a price correction to reflect the current 35%+ difference in currencies and has not resulted in the bump in sales that should have been expected (although a discount is a discount even if it's for a product that was previously over priced due to an imbalanced exchange rate).
The upside to this is that the Wii should be in regular supply in the U.S. once the EU market is flush, as currently seems to be the case in Japan, given current weekly rates of sales.
The downside is that the U.S. market may not take precidence when it comes to receiving inventory in the future if the dollar continues to soften against other currencies.
OK, one last stab at explaining the Wii shortage. I was talking to a game-industry analyst this week about how retailer GameStop (which is based in Grapevine) will fare if there is a recession or economic slowdown. During the course of the interview, the analyst, Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan, said the real culprit for the Wii shortage in the U.S. is the weak dollar. I know this is getting rather dense for a game column, but bear with me. With a weak dollar, foreign companies that sell their goods in the U.S. for dollars and then convert those dollars to their native currencies get a smaller profit than if they sell their products in countries with strong currencies of their own (such as Europe with the euro). In other words, Nintendo makes a bigger profit on Wiis sold in Europe than on Wiis sold in the U.S. So Nintendo, Mr. Pachter said, has been behaving perfectly rationally by sending excess Wii consoles to Europe to satisfy the more profitable consumers there. But now that demand in Europe is subsiding to normal levels, those surplus consoles will be redirected to American gamers, Mr. Pachter said, and the Wii should finally become more plentiful in the States later this year. That jibes with the time frame GameStop laid out for when it expects the Wii to become easier to find in the U.S. Mr. Pachter's assessment makes a lot of sense to me, and it explains why Nintendo has been so reluctant to account for the Wii shortage. No one wants to hear that they're second-class customers, but that's exactly what we American gamers are right now.
