America has a big advantage over Europe in terms of games sold just because of one single reason:

America has a common language for 300 million people: English!

We, in Europe, don't! A game must be translated at least in 5 languages which means more costs for the producer and longer time to get on the market, with less profits!!! If you sum it up with the fact that in Europe gaming isn't spread evenly because of different cultures (France has roughly the same population of Italy, but it's gaming market is 3-4x of Italy's!!!), you have the whole picture!

That said, an hardware manufacturer (in this case Nintendo) has more intrests on selling console where the currency is stronger, but has fewer intrests on putting the games on the sheves there first because of the reason above!

So if Europe, this time around, is more profitabile HW-wise, America still more important for games and the numbers sold there!

Anyway, Pachter has a good point on this subject and if the European market stabilize itself (Japan has already) in the coming weeks we will see if Nintendo re-allocates sources to America, which could lead to a flood of Wii.

In fact, if the numbers of Wiis sold coming from this very site are correct, Nintendo is making 1.8million per month but there's is no sold out as they sell roughly 350-380K Wiis per week WW, leaving as much as 200K Wiis unsold per month, stockpiling somewhere!!!

As a proof of that Nintendo stated that 24.5M are going to be on the market by the end of fiscal year (which is on the 31st of March, just few days away), but as you can see as of now, only 23M Wii's where sold.

So where are those Wiis?? Sitting on European shelves?? If it is so and if the demand is so high in the USA, why not to reallocate that "missing" 1.5M Wiis in the USA??

Don't you have the minimum suspect that Pachter is right and Nintendo prefere not to sell them immediately, but save them for better times, when USA currency is in better shape?

So Nintendo sell Wii mostly in Europe and Japan, yet still they sold more in the USA?

 If you looked at my numbers above, the allocation of consoles from GC generation to Wii generation for America has gone down from 59% to 43%. This information combined with the fact that there are Wiis sitting on the shelf in Europe but none in America makes an intelligent human being to jump to the conclusion that Nintendo is interested in meeting demand in Europe and Japan before meeting demand in America. A likely explination for this is our currency devaluation compared to the rest of the world. 

Next time, try to make sense.

So NA is their biggest market, yet they sold more DS in Japan and Europe than in NA, well that makes sense too.

This thread is about the Wii shortages, not the DS. The handheld market is very different from the console market. As far as I know the DS doesn't have shortages except during the holidays.

Supply exceeded demand in Europe and Japan a long time ago, and yet, not in NA.

This comment of yours actually supports my arguments.

Believing the dollar will recover in 1 year or 2 would be surprising, with the recession and the crisis coming with it soon. At Wii launch, the Euro currency was already far more powerful than the dollar, so what you say is even more insane.

Most recessions only last 2 or 3 quarters(6 to 9 months), which means that it is very likely that the recession will be over by the end of the year. My argument is that our dollar is MORE weak against the Euro than at launch. I never said the Euro wasn't already stronger than the dollar at launch. Besides, Nintendo couldn't completely neglect America during launch or else they would look bad.

The simple fact is that Wii sells at unprecedented rates, which is not hard to understand, or so I thought.

@Tharthesos:

As some people have said, this looks correct on the surface but doesn't hold much water on closer inspection:

1- it doesn't explain why the Wii has been sold out in America every single week since launch, even when it wasn't sold out anywhere else.

2- Software sales are tied to hardware sales, and, according to this currency theory, they're also more interesting for Nintendo in Europe, since games cost 50 € which is more than $50 even accounting for taxes. If hardware sales are so important for their profit, why don't they launch games such as SSBB earlier? I don't even mean earlier than in USA, just not months later than in USA.

3- Otherwise, if as you said software sales are more profitable in USA, to sell software you need to sell hardware first, and software is certainly more profitable than hardware. This also goes against Nintendo making America suffer from a shortage of Wiis.

The bottom line is that this explanation is at best insufficient, and at worst totally incongruent with reality. Better than typical Pachter, but still not very good.

The simple and IMO correct explanation for the shortages is that Wii demand is higher than expected everywhere in the world, especially so in America. This means that unless production is increased, there's no way supply will be enough in America.

PS: I don't think the stockpiling has anything to do with currencies. It has to do with the necessity of Wiis for the Chinese/Korean launch, Wii Fit launch, holiday season. In other words, the reason for stockpiling is the same as last year's plus the Asian launches.