It's 1:29pm here in UK right now, and a news report just came on about Wii's. They said the supply of Wii's is still short and people are getting frustrated that they can't get hold of one. A HMV retail representative said that they were disappointed as, as a retailer, they want to sell the customers what they want. Apparantly a new shipment arrived to the shop and was sold out within minutes. So I guess trying to get one early in time for Christmas isn't going to work unless/until shipment is boosted over here.

I remember that a few months ago, some guys were saying "it's stupid to stockpile for Christmas". I hope they're reading this thread.

I hope that supply also increases substantially in Europe! I think it will.

With (roughly) 600,000 Wii systems sold in North America in October I do wonder how many systems it would take to satisfy demand in November and December. At the same time I wonder if Nintendo did stockpile systems and (if so) what kind of numbers we will see.

Of course they're stockpiling for Christmas. We have a lot of evidence for that:

1- They're claiming 1.8 million Wiis produced per month since around July, and as we know sales are lower than that.

2- They said supply will about double in Christmas, and nothing points to that being the result of an immediate increase in supply.

3- They raised their shipment forecasts at least twice (combine that with number 1 above and the only realistic conclusion is that not all of their production is immediately going to store shelves).

Maybe there's more, but those three things (especially 1 and 3) alone convince me that there's major stockpiling going on. In the latest interview they say that Wiis take 20 days to get from factories to store shelves, so I bet that there are, LITERALLY, "boatloads" of Wiis currently crossing the pacific ocean for the holiday period.