Biggerboat is right.

Right now, the increases have been very minimal. In Japan, the Wii has almost always been 70k post-holidays, 90k in NA, and 60k in Europe, with very little changes. DQS might increase the total weekly sales by ~30k units. Thats hardly a difference.

Nintendo would be VERY stupid if they were holding back stores on a system that has complete sellthrough in most locales. Selling them now would allow for more software sales overall. But if they're not finding reasonable strong solutions to produce alot more systems, worldwide supplies of the Wii could be ~500k a week during the holidays, or less, and force consumers to go with the similar priced X360 or the PS3....Which would spell disaster for Nintendo.

So hopefully they are increasing production, in a real, viable way. Brazil would be an interesting locale as well for a factory.

Nahhh... history has taught us that the winner this gen has already been decided. Each console has already fallen into it's niche... check out the thread that discusses PS3's planned shipments, you can clearly see through Sony's past consoles what we should expect from the new market leader and currently there have been more Wii's made then Sony made PS1's and PS2's... Ignore the PS3 data, it was plunked on that graph to try and woo investors..

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=4240&start=50#end 

Nintendo has to be very carefull with production, yes of course they need lots of systems for the hollydays but new production facilities cost a lot of money and if the have overproduction after christmas they might start watching their consoles collect dust, or have to consider pausing production which is bad as well,

Sony may have this problem right now, there must be something like 2-4 million PS3 sitting in shelfes acording to Sonys own production numbers, the price drop (be it real or unreal or what not) will help get some sold but not nearly all of them, I don´t whant to start flameing here but we all know Sony is producing more PS3s than they selling, I have no idea what they are going to do about this other than the price drop

Parokki said:

>>Can anyone think of a good reason why Nintendo still hasn't significantly increased their Wii production?

How can Nintendo be ramping up production for months now from what we've been hearing and barely any noticeable effect on the sales in any of the regions?

Hmmz, it seems to me that someone who buys a Wii in mid-summer will likely consider to buy it in november if it was out of stock.
Around christmas many people buy consoles, not for themselves, but for other people. So if those people don't find a Wii they'll buy another gift.

So sales lost by end-consumers will end up in delayed sales, sales lost as presents are lost forever. So Nintendo better takes care every consumer has finds a Wii in december, certainly because it will help broadening the consumer base. Just imagine adults buying a Wii for their parents. They would not have bought it themselves, they'll probably like it, and tell their surroundings about how great the system is witch will lead into those direct consumer sales.

I wasn't trying to imply that PS3 or 360 selling more than the Wii over the holidays would change the eventual outcome of the 'war' but it could definately convince a few developers to hold off on Wii development in favour of a PS3/360 for a while longer.

I have thought of this angle before, people jumping to other systems at an increased rate around buying season thus making it feesible for N to stockpile but then some people dismiss this strategy as bad business. I'm no business graduate so is there anybody who knows if this is a known, legitamite tactic?

 Well the toy market (including video games) have used this method since toys first started being made in large quantities.  So yes, Nintendo knows it had better stock pile some consoles for Christmas...  but I think Nintendo is still in shock that their console is still sold out.  They couldn't have expected this to happen.  Their sales estimates for their investors shows way lower numbers then we should expect to see.  I expect Nintendo will revise their numbers come end of August or September and we will find out a little more as to Nintendo's Christmas plans...  I hope that when they said they increased production (and Miyamoto talked about this at E3) that they have stock piled all of those consoles...  I figure the Wii could sell somewhere around 6 million consoles during November and December (3 million a month).  Demand should tripple for the hollidays...  right?

right