Yeah, just like last year, right? They doubled production in November and trippled it in December, then they went back to normal in January... honestly, why do you think they do not stockpile? Look at last years monthly sales, do you think the Wii was overshipped during the whole year? It often dipped below 200k a week and it never sold more than 300k a week before October.

No, honestly: Give me some back-up and I´ll agree with you. Its just that last years sales wouldn´t make any sense without stockpiling. Ah, doesn´t matter anyway. 

Seriously... People who thought Nintendo didn't stockpile got burned last year, and they will get burned this year too. Wasn't it enough to learn it once?

The fact is that every produced Wii is either:

1- At someone's house (counts as produced, shipped and sold).
2- Sitting on retailer's shelves or warehouses (counts as produced and shipped).
3- Sitting on Nintendo's warehouses (counts as produced).

You can always take the bet I propose in my sig, if you have the guts of course.

Europe in general is very hard to predict. Just take Germany for example, people say they see Wii´s everywhere but I just see them occasionally when I walk into big stores. Additionally, February may have seen good supply in France while Italy was sold out but in May it is possible German people die in a wave of shipped Wii consoles while nobody sees them in Spain... well, its Europe, isn´t it?

In general, Wii´s are much easier to find in Europe than in the US, though. The shortage really isn´t that big I think. But its still miles away from a good supply. In Japan, on the other hand, I´d argue the Wii wasn´t sold out since the second half of 2007 - maybe during the christmas season but certainly not this year.

Supply: Japan > Europe > America.

Stop lying and at least check something before making a statement. If you check the actual availability it shows it is sold out at the moment at Otto.nl! And also start making claims about Wii being available in the whole of the Netherlands. Maybe it is where you live, but it simply hasn't been true where I live for the last few months.

I'm going to travel to Portugal on Saturday and I'll check out Wii availability in the area (if I have the time). In the online retailers I usually check it has been sold out since the beginning of the year.

sooo....some here claim Nintendo is following a big masterplan with this? Kind of like: a yes, this week, we just ship 180K and the next we ship 400K and then just for fun 240K and then maybe, um, i feel like 176.8 K.

I would love to understand how this is presumably working. any ideas?

 I don´t think he is lying, really. It is quite possible Wii´s are relatively easy to get in the Netherlands, at least in some parts. As I said predicting supply is very hard in Europe.

It's not that easy, retailers also play with their supply (an example I often hear is those which wait until Sunday to release their Wiis).

 No, certainly not but Nintendo ships more if retailers demand it. That´s how supply works. Sometimes they get more consoles out, sometimes not. Additionally some retailers stockpile for big games - take Brawl as an example, America sales have been less than 100k units for some weeks now and they know they´ll sell out completely if they place every shipped Wii on the shelfs, so they stockpile themselves because they want big software titles to sell well - software sells hardware, but only if there is some hardware left. You could argue a lot of people would buy a Wii for Brawl and shops don´t want to lose those additonal sales because there are no consoles left. 

Louie, he uses Otto.nl as an example. I go to the website, put a Wii in my shoppingcart, and press check availability for the product. You know what happens? It says "Helaas uitverkocht", which means it is not in stock at the moment. I use that information for my first reply in this thread and MikeB still claims it has been available at that website for a long time now. I just checked it 5 minutes ago, so I know that is simply not true. And when you tell things that aren't true, you are lying.