No I think those reasons are all correct if you read the rest of the post I was just questioning if maybe the stockpiling is from the Retailers themselves and not Nintendo. If the retailers are not willing to stock the extra Wiis themselves then by all means I'm quite willing to believe Nintendo is doing it themselves I was just putting forward that perhaps they are sitting in Walmart warehouses instead of Nintendo warehouses thats all.

Oh I see. It's not the case though, because otherwise we could conclude so by comparing Nintendo's shipped numbers with sold-to-customers (VGC or NPD) numbers. Stockpiling at retailers is quite limited in terms of absolute number of units.

Like I said, Leo-J really doesn't know what he's talking about. Every single one of his 'I predict', 'I expect' have been completely off target.

This to me sounds as if the Wii could only do 1.8 million in december worlwide due to that being the maximum production Nintendo can reach .Maybe a bit more due to some stock left in Japan and Europe .

Yea thats true I forgot about the fact N's shipped #'s would reflect that thanks. Definitely N stocking them then which I don't blame them as has been repeated all console makers have done this since forever for the reasons listed above. Its definitely for things like that and not some evil conspiracy to artificially raise demand like Reggie said they don't wanna lose sales this holiday any system that was withheld will be out in the retail chain before the 25th thats for sure. Its definitely nothing like that under producing of game carts they did for the NES at Christmas in the 80's I'm pretty sure they learned their lesson from that one to take advantage of market momentum while they are leading and not squander it on withholding stock schemes some seem to think they do.

Diomedes, did you read any of the replies above yours? It's been thoroughly established that you're probably wrong.

I can't wait until this gets submitted to digg with a misleading headline, and all the comments will be about how "the Wii is finished because the PS3 passed it two weeks ago" and "it's only got casual games with waggle".

 There is also no DS redesign in the works. I don't trust what Nintendo says, as a rule.

Personally, I don't think they are hording them I just think that Nintendo is very cautious about creating more factories to meet the demand. I think a part of this is because they are a games company and not a mega- major electronics company like Micro- Soft and Sony. Nintendo has had some succes in their past but they have also had some less than stellar sells on their consels. The Game Cube didn't sell that great even though they expected it to do better it never did. It had awesome holiday sells and post holiday hype and then it dropped off. The same thing happened with the N64, it was the hottest thing out there and then after the allure of Mario wore off everyone left it for PS.
SO what I think is happening here is Nintendo does not want to make more factories (pay employees, ship parts, buy parts (like the Broad Way chips from IBM) because they don't know if the sells they are experiencing now are going to be the norm for the system or if they are going to level out (at a lower rate).
Now what if they built all of those factories and then all of a sudden no one wants a Wii anymore? Do you know how much money they would lose? At the same time Reggie/ Nintendo realizes that they are hot right now and they look at the current situation and think man it would be great if we had more systems out there. And they would say that because they can see that everything is still selling where as months ago they couldn't have know.
Other things have change too. Like you have consider that Nin's rival have both dropped the prices on there systems and in light of that I think that it would be wise to have a wait and see attitude. They aren't oblivious to every saying things like "The reason the Wii is selling is because it is so cheap." They also know that mostly their games are carrying the system because a lot of 3rd parties (for various reasons) are making Wii-Crap titles. They know that the same 3rd parties are resenting Nintendo's sucess and that some of the gamers are upset with them for not having good 3rd party titles. They still are fighting the kiddy image that so-called Hardcore's are throwing on them but they also get it from developers as well. Despite the fact that they had Manhunt 2, God Father, Scarface, RE4, RS1... etc you can still hear people and companies say Nintendo is kiddy or "this game won't fit their demograph."
If any of you remember, the Gamecube and the N64, faced similar criticisms from fans and critics. Those criticisms hurt the company greatly, that is why they went a different path with Wii. So I just think they aren't in hurry to boost demand until they are 100% that demand will remain this high.
If Wii-Fit is very successful (as most predict), I think then and only then will they create more factories.

But there is one thing that is true it is better in the public's eye to have to little of something, that to have to much of something. If they made those factories and maybe they created more systems than "demand" could absorb or if the demand suddenly dropped sharply- do you know what the perception would be to the customers, the analyst, and the STOCK HOLDERS when the news story hits in the Wall Street Journal: NINTENDO CLOSES FACTORY DUE TO LOWER DEMAND IN SYSTEM.

As for me I can wait 2 years for mine, I go to the store and look at all of the games I want to play and I dream of what price they will be when I finally (w/out camping) get my hands on a Wii. I bet by then even the Wii will be cheaper. I did the same with my DS.

 That's not what I meant. I meant if nintendo had consoles to selled they get them to retailers as soon as possible. You are talking about production scales. Obviously if nintendo could make more consoles, they would.

Probably.. You really should have gotten one during the Summer.. Try going to GameStop when they first open on a Sunday, that's probably your best bet until the end of the year.