No. If that was the case. Than Wii U should of been strapped with production too.

NO!

All I can say is that it's their product and their job to produce and distribute it.

Sure. The buck ultimately stops with them.

You could say that they're incompetent for not finding a way to manufacture more, but as the Wall Street Journal speculates, the only way might be to try and outbid for components which could mean selling at a loss.

So we have a situation in which you could either say they're incompetent for not outbidding Apple, or they're incompetent at making money on their flagship product.

I'd rather look at things more holistically and say that the situation just is what it is right now.

I don't buy that. They've been having "shortages" since the NES. If a team of or a few employees was the reason for the repeated shortages with just one console or product, they would have been fired by any company. The shortages are fact-of-life with almost all of their hardware and popular products year round. There's definitely a pattern and that's why there's alot talk from a lot of notable gaming journalists, youtubers, business people saying the shortages have to be on purpose because it happens so much and that it is clever of nintendo to do it. If it's not intentional then it's a monumental fuck up by nintendo to let it keep happening for so long.

Uncontrolled random shortages are a bad thing but managed scarcity is a good thing if done right. There's a word of difference between the two. By all means, keep saying that nintendo is incompetent enough to keep having shortages for over two decades. That narrative is pretty hilarous to me considering that many nintendo fans act like nintendo walks on water and they always like to point out how nintendo is such a great business. 

I could believe it for the initial launch to get some buzz going but this would be far to long to create buzz and would just take sales away at this point.

No. I think the demand is higher than expected and the components and logistics of increasing output is not something Nintendo can do quickly. Every console manufacturer wants to get their install base up as quickly as possible.

I believe they could make more than they currently do but are hesitant to do so because overstocking shelves might give the impression that it's popularity has declined.

Yawn.

As for businesspeople, the only one I saw in the links posted was a GameStop guy offering his opinion on the Wii shortage.

In hindsight, the Wii crushed the competition by millions of units in 2007-2010. 

Do we really think that Nintendo settled for selling 17 million Wiis in 2007, but really could have sold millions more had they simply flipped a switch? What would be the point?

"Artificial scarcity" was silly back then and it is silly now. 

The only Nintendo related argument you can make here is that they're a conservative company that hates having products sitting in warehouses. That goes out the window once the product is already a hit though. 

They're at the top of every chart but want to take it easy on Sony and MS. Good guy Ninty.

This argument is still a thing? LMAO