No, it's up to Nintendo to try sell these product to retailers, but retailers are the ones who decide how much stock they'll order.

Here's how it roughly works from what i understand: Nitnendo has a new product called NES classic. They'll talk to retail giants to carry the product.

Retailers then decides to carry the product or not, if so how much. (first problem starts here, because nintendo sales were down this gen, orders will be low). Where I work, orders are done through a cgo(computer generated ordering), it predicts how much to order based on sales history, then management will make changes to the orders based on that they see fit.

Nintendo will determine how much to produce based on orders as well as how much to keep in inventory. (here's the second problem, Nintendo is in a lean cost cutting mode, they will try to keep inventory down to save money, if demand far exceeds inventory, they will have to produce more which will take time)

Last, orders will be shipped by sea or air, probably almost all will be by sea becasue it's a lot cheaper, which takes time (idr how long but probably 30days), but this shouldn't affect the initial orders. However, it matters a lot on the next wave of shipments. So, when they are out, they will be out for awhile. Some retailers may try to ask for low volume air shipments before main shipments arrive.

So, it's the consumers fault for now buying enough 3DS and WiiU that these items are low in stock :P . Nah, it's everyones fault but since you cant blame consumers, it's Nintendo's low inventory and low retail orders are to blame.

I'm sure that you are right and that Nintendo had business reasons for not increasing the 3DS's supply, but I feel that business reasons are not always good reasons especially for a company like Nintendo that relies on innovation and pop culture to turn a profit.  Sometimes it's worth it to dig a bit deeper into your wallet and take a chance on something then to play it safe.  I think that the hype Pokemon GO created was worth taking a chance on.  If I were Nintendo, I would have done an all-out re-release of the 3DS with a bunch of Pokemon art designs and bundles with Sun and Moon and a massive Pokemon-themed advertising campaign.

I'm sure that the reason they didn't want to do this was so that they do not divert attention from the Switch.  Maybe, for all I know, they are going to have a surprise Pokemon release of somekind when the Switch comes out and that's when they will make their big push.  In either case, my opinion isn't worth much, it just pains me to see all this hype from Pokemon GO seemingly going to waste this Christmas season.

I mean the Switch is clearly the reason for this. Quite frankly, I think Nintendo may be mildly terrified of the prospect of the 3DS getting a massive second wind that basically undermines the Switch's popularity as its successor. They know how important the Switch launch is and they probably had a monkey wrench thrown into their plans with PoGo. There's absolutely no way Nintendo could have planned for PoGo to happen back when they were outlining their strategy for selling the Switch. They probably assumed they could kind of phase 3DS out after this Holiday and all attention would be on the Switch. Well now Pokemon is a phenomenon again and Sun and Moon have made the 3DS a hot ticket item again. So they're purposefully trying to supress the 3DS demand by not supplying enough to meet it.

I actually doubt that's the situation.  Nintendo has done the exact OPOSITE of try and woo 3DS fans:  they have kept the Switch as far away from the 3DS as possible in their messaging.  Look at official messages from them and just count how many times they say "home console" :P

I do think the Switch is part of the issue.  Nintendo is just tied up in a lot of projects and their resources are likely just a bit on the tight side.  They want to be in the black or as close as possible at the close of the fiscal year so they didn't want to overcommit.  And then the Switch is entering production, so they have a considerable degree of spending going into the production of a device that will not be sold during the fiscal year.  And as I said, the PoGo effect was clearly far greater than literally anyone would have imagined.  So it's entirely possible Nintendo was trying to be conservative with shipments, trying to be as close as possible to what they believed actual sales would be, and then PoGo effect happened and lasted all the way into the Holidays and caused Sun and Moon to be an enormous hit that no one saw coming.  In this instance, I think  Nintendo is just legitimately caught off guard.

I hope Nintendo one day partners with a credible marketing firm that teaches them how all of this works. AS others have said they are excellent creators and artists but marketing experts they are not. Honestly if they had a good marketing division, the Wii U and 3ds would have sold a lot more and they would be closer to the PS consoles sales. Even if you have a great product, if its not marketed properly, it'll flop

Nintendo should just sell the NES Classic on their online stores. Problem solved.  Screw these retailers that are only getting it restocked 5 at a time every few days.

to be somewhat fair, when has any mainline Pokemon game NOT been an enormous hit. Not counting the remakes and third/sequel versions, pretty much every mainline Pokemon have been at least around the 15 million range. Though I can understand Sun and Moon selling close to 10 million this quickly being unexpected. There was no doubt it was going to be a hit but it went really well in a matter of days. Hell, with the type of legs we know Pokemon has, it'll continue to sell well for a long while maybe surpass XY and BW.

Yeah, I looked for 4 weeks and on Christmas eve I'm still here unable to find a NES Classic for my sister as a Christmas gift.

Yeah every Pokemon is a hit, but Sun and Moon is outpacing pretty much every Pokemon ever except MAYBE Red and Blue.  So yeah.  

No stock means less purchases, Nintendo needs to keep up their inventory :/