"Nintendo tends to manage the distribution channel to generate some sort of perception that its [system] is in demand." - Colin Sebastian of R.W. Baird

Wii U is reportedly selling out at retailers at present, but is this really a sign of dominanting holiday sales? 

With the Wii, Nintendo constrained supply to drive up demand. This worked  well for them because the Wii was much a sought after item, but there is nowhere near as much hype for Wii U, and demand will not be nearly as high. Lack of supply will hurt sales because a lot of people who might have  bought a Wii U will just grab a PS3 or a 360 instead, rather than waiting for a Wii U. 

Nintendo dropping the Wii almost completely won't help either, as it won't present a lower-price-point rival to the PS3/360 thanks to a lack of big holiday sellers. With their new console likely to be under-supplied and their old one abandoned, a lot of potential buyers will flock to Sony and Microsoft instead.

I know we all love to bag Pachter, but this comment from him in mid September holds some water:

"We know no one has leaked any pictures of the Wii U supply line. Those always leak. Someone always sneaks a camera into the facility. The fact that we haven't seen pictures means manufacturing hasn't started as of this week.

So even if Nintendo doesn't try to pull the "restrict supply to boost demand" trick, they may not be CAPABLE of producing enough Wii U consoles to deliver a crushing blow to the PS3 and 360.

Don't get me wrong, I would love nothing more than to see the Wii U dominate this holiday season, and as bad as is sounds, I want the 360 and PS3 to diminish, not because I have anything against Sony and Microsoft, but because I am sick of this generation and I want the next one to start as soon as possible.

But I just don't see it happening with things as they are: the Wii U may win the holidays only barely or not at all, and the PS3/360 will take advantage of the buyers Nintendo missed to boost their numbers, dragging out this gen and hurting the Wii U's performance.

I completely agree. Nintendo even undership pre-orders, that don't even need to be in production line. They can't even supply enough IOU.

well, it seems like the wiiU is going to be $500 (basic version) here. So I guess no sell outs everytwhere...

Not this again....

They aren't under stocking wii u at all. They plan to ship 3 million in the us. Their target for march was 10 million with wii and wii u sales combined but is it really wrong to think this could sell as fast as wii did.

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2012/00061638-wii-u-les-usa-a-sec.htm

It's going to be really bad news if wiiu is outsold by PS3 or even 360 post holiday.

Yes, they are brilliant at just creating demand out of thin air. Which is why the 3DS saw record sales and was in low supply for the first 6 months of its life.

All will be revealed in the New Year.

Never mind that this is based on the say so of one guy i.e. probably not based on anything like fact, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for Nintendo to do this.

Nintendo's game at this stage has got to be to get as many WiiUs in people's homes as possible before PS4 and Nextbox are announced and as many more as they can before they are released.

People seem to think that ramping up production of a completely new bit of hardware is like snapping your fingers but supply issues early in the hardware life cycle is not unique to gaming as isn't automatically evidence that the manufacturer is intentionally limiting supply.