It definitely could with Pokemon Sun and Moon being just released..

But yes, the shipments could indeed be the deciding factor

switchs around the corner

yep save that 100$ and wait for switch, if you dont already have a 3ds.

I remember hearing something like that. I think there was just more demand than supplies that can be manufactured in such a short amount of time for the Wii. Even the original DS didn't get off the ground quite like the Wii.

It's not hard to win on the dedicated handheld side of things these days lol.

Was able to pre-order it last night on Amazon! Will never buy a console first year and I still have the OG flame red 3DS. Time to upgrade.

If Nintendo shipped 1.8 million consoles a month the first year, why did they only sell 15 million the first 12 months?? The week by week sales do not reflect 1.8 million being shipped and sold out every month. Please site a source, especially if you're calling people liars. 

Because they did not start out producing 1.8 million a month. They started out making 600,000 for Americas, 400,000 for Japan and another 350,000 for Europe at launch (or something like that). That is more than 1.3 million at launch. When they realized demand was way higher than supply (remember Wii was after a failed Gamecube, the preorders for Wii were modest, and Wii came out days after Playstation 3 so nobody was expecting Nintendo to sell all 1.3 million consoles out in the first few days... not even Nintendo), they forced Foxxconn to stop producing any other products to produce 1.8 million Wii consoles a month (however, you cannot just start producing 1.8 million the moment you want to, it took Foxxconn months to get that together... which is why I continue to mention Foxxconn because they are the ones that actually manufacture the console; not Nintendo) until Foxxconn literally complained that they could not produce consoles any faster. Look at the sales history of the console. Nintendo broke monthly sales records with Wii and while they were doing that, people were really trying to say they, "undershipped" or held supply to create the frenzy. Where? They were selling everything they were producing at world record pace.

In short, they did not start out producing 1.8 million, they bumped production up to 1.8 million (which was, and may still be, a world record) and still sold every console.

And by the way, I did not say they did it every month of the first year... I said they did it and were selling them all. This was not an issue of them underproducing becuase they were trying to overproduce them and still could not match demand.

"On July 11, 2007, Nintendo warned that the Wii would remain in short supply throughout that calendar year.[45] In December, Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that Nintendo was producing approximately 1.8 million Wii consoles each month.[46] Some UK stores still had a shortage of consoles as of March 2007,[47] demand still outpaced supply in the United States as of June 2007,[48] and the console was "selling out almost as quickly as it hits retail shelves" in Canada as of April 2008.[49][50] In October 2008 Nintendo announced that between October and December the Wii would have its North American supplies increased considerably from 2007 levels,[51] while producing 2.4 million Wii units a month worldwide (compared to 1.6 million per month in 2007)."

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_sales

I read that it was a special edition Nintendo 3DS though. Not 100% for sure on that but I think I read it was a special or limited edition.