The Wii U is sold out all over Japan and Nintendo isn’t talking

[StuOhQ]

Soundwave said:

I think Nintendo has basically manufactured the last of their Wii Us already, so whatever they have now they're not going to be making any more, probably because they likely are getting bent over by their supply chain manufacturers (Sony in part owns the only factory that can make the Wii U's eDRAM or something).

There could be other issues at play here too, since the Wii U is a relative failure of a product, the supply chain manufacturers probably want a high minimum order from Nintendo, and Nintendo may be reluctant to get locked into too many Wii Us out of fear of being stuck with unsold inventory with the NX coming. 

In that scenario Nintendo then likely has to eat a loss to get rid of that unsold stock. 

That's the idea, for sure. Whether they've used all of their chips remains to be seen. What is clear is that they are very reluctant to build more machines than they need to hit quarterly sales goals. 

 

EDIT: If the NX isn't a home console, they are really being ultra-conservative with production.

Additionally, restricting shipments serves a second purpose of artificially justifying an earlier NX launch date. It was getting hard to square a rushed release for the next console when the Wii U was not only profiting, but up YOY almost every sales week.