Yeah I also think nintendo expected their motion controles to be big, but played a humble stratergy as part of the disruption. Every one else was boasting and nintendo quietly comes in with a new idea that quietly/loudly spoke for its self. The proud 'Im the best' attitude of sony and microsoft was disrupted by the humble 'creative' nintendo approach. Underneath all the PR coments etc its very hard to tell what a company is really thinking. Their hearts could have been racing with excitement as they waited for the day the wii was released and the world finaly realised how much they needed it.

As for the production issues we should all know by now how hard it is to set up a developement line for a console, especially one that pumps out a few mill a month, so Nintendos delay to ramp production us very understandable.

Nintendo also angled their product differently to sony n ms (they weren't in competition). When you think of the wii as another huge mass produced consumer product such as pepsi you can start to see how nintendo was viewing their wii and where they wanted it to go. And as Astrosmash has stated they had set them selves up for a market monopoly right from the beginning. If it failed they had a huge stock but why start off producing so many wiis if your only going to have to close factories and cut jobs as a result of over production. Its a stupid market decision. They always knew they were going to sell big and continue to do so!

conclusion: They thought it would be big and strategicaly played an appealing and humble stratergy.

Nintendo expected it to be successful,but they didn't expect it to be this successful,otherwise they would have been producing 2.4 million consoles a month.
Plus Nintendo didn't expect to sell all those consoles in the first three month's,they probably wouldn't ship them all if it wasn't for the successful launch that it had.

It's actually a pretty old argument. It just seems new because nobody's said it in months.

Hell, I expected it.

Anybody that didn't, didn't pay attention to the lines at the E3 when the Wii and PS3 were finally playable.

The line for the Wii was an average of 5.5 hours long, while the PS3 was 25 minutes.

I remember saying to people that the Wii would skirt around the PS3 and 360, as they battled for "power", and that the Wii would coast right by. Ah, the good old days of being laughed at.

How I miss it.

@SHMUPgurus: What a crock of shit.

I've been hearing this ever since the Wii released.

Guess what?

I've also been hearing it since the PSP and DS went up against eachother. This has nothing to do with "false demand", and everything to do with thinking outside of the box, and creating something new that appeals to people.

Seriously, it's time for a new arguement.

The question isn't whether Nintendo expected the Wii to be a success or not, it's whether they expected the Wii to be as successful as it is today, and the answer is no. no one knew.

Do you all really think Nintendo would STILL be having shotages if they "expected" this kind of success? Lets be realistic here.

Wow, I should have seriously added a ''o_o'' simly or ''/sarcasm'' tag... I thought it was clear enough with the ''Ya dig bro'' that I was just playing with him though.

Geez... I'm not denying Nintendo created a totally new thing that everyone has to experience, which is definitely a better reason why it's been outsold so much since it's release (I mean, everyone with a brain can notice it, just look at the DS)!

-_-;

They would have stepped up production once they realised just how many preorders were produced.

Also I would like to point out that once the controller was announced I knew the Wii would be big. :P

They surely expect the Wii to be successfull.
However what was nknown before the launch was the entity of Wii success and when the phenomenon would ingnite.

They where expecting it to be a success, but nothing of this size ;)