I feel vindicated against all those who yelled at me when I said they'll move to 1.5M this year Although this is about three months earlier than my projection http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?start=100&id=1019

Have you any bloody idea how many DS's they're making a month? They're churning them out faster than Sony made PS2s at its peak. Something like 3 million a month. Production capacity is NOT unlimited. And when you consider that the DS is virtually free of any technical flaws (apart from the hinge thing), that makes it an even more impressive feat, because the more stringent the quality assurance (and Nintendo's QA is top-notch, because theirs are the only systems I know that have not had any major or recurring complaints), the lower the production yield becomes. To maintain production of 3 million units of a system consisting of delicate miniaturized components and STILL have a spotless QA record is an simply amazing.

It's not supply problems. Its DEMAND.

While I'm not entirely disagreeing with your statement that they could have pushed way more systems out for both the DS and the Wii, I still think that they know what they are doing. 

Look, I think its easy for us to sit on the outside and say "Man, they obviously should have started ramping up production way earlier" because we see the results AND we have no risk to weigh in against.  Unfortunately for them, the people making production decisions are the ones who are spending the millions we are discussing here. 

All I'm saying is to give them the benefit of the doubt.  We have no way of knowing exactly how much they are ramping up production or what they are doing with the units built.  The people running Nintendo aren't newbies at this business and I'm sure they are hearing all these same opinions all the time.  Until I see proof positive that they are doing something dumb, I'll assume that we either don't have the whole picture or that there are other constraits to them increasing production.

In a way production capacity is UNLIMITED. All they have to do is contract more maunfacturers to make it.

They have been maintaining 2.5 million, started doing in late 06. Iwata has considered uping it even more.

Look at Ipod they have sold 50 million in their last 4 quarters. How many have they had to produce to meet that? More than the DS. It might even be harder for the Ipod because there are multiple version.

Archmagnus you make some very good points and I agree with all of them except the production capacity. 

First, about the iPod, NO. It has NOT sold 50 million in four quarters. Apple's sold 100 million iPods OVERALL since its launch in 2001. The iPod has sold about 10-20 million a year, usually averaging 15 million. That's LESS than what the DS has sold, and the iPod is a much less complex device to produce.

Second, once again, no, production capacity is NOT unlimited. They cannot just "contract more manufacturers" because of quality assurance issues, payment issues, supply issues, etc. Even if they do get more contractors, the production increases won't take happen for at least a few months, maybe even a year, and it'll probably only happen gradually.

John Lucas - read my news story on this.  It looks like VGCharts is showing Nintendo right around 1 million Wiis sold in May after selling around 850,000 in April.  Note that this is based on 4 week months - you can safely add 10% to each claim per month.  Still, that puts Wii at 900,000 or so for 30 day April and Wii at 1.1 million or so for 31 day May.  If the increases in production continue at 200,000 per month, then Wii will not sell 1.5 million per month until (late?) July.  There is certaintly no evidence that production capacity is over 1.1 million per month at the moment (May) for Wii. 

Ipod sales

Thats 48,455,000 sold in one year. Close to 50 million. Far closer than your 10 - 20 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ipod_sales.svg

Ipod sales.

Expanding manufacturing is not nearly as simple as setting up a new production line. There are dozens of companies that make components that go into each console. If just one of those component suppliers comes up short, production grinds to a halt. Also, you have to make sure support is up to the task of handling the additional load. Simply flooding the market with consoles can quickly overload support. It takes time to hire and train support staff, from the people who answer phones to the technicians that do repairs. The worst thing you can do is have loads of angry customers that can't get decent support.

You are correct on this evidence.

Nintendo is selling 262,317 systems a week on average now.

Multiply that by 4 1/3 (average weeks in a month) and you get 1,136,707 units sold a month. Hopefully they are holding a lot of systems back. If not their production really sucks.