@Greenmedic&Pipedream: That Pachters conspiracy theory is just BS. We already know that Pachter isn't living in this reality by his "observations". I'll make here a few points to disprove the "theory":
1. There were no supply constrains in Europe, so it doesn't make sense to ship excessive amount of consoles to Europe, that they can't sell, when they could make money with the consoles in NA. And even less, when the delay causes Nintendo to sell less games.
2. Despite not having supply constrains, Wii did have shortages in the UK a couple of times. Which should be enough as an evidence, that there's no secret Nintendo warehouse with millions of Wiis waiting for someone to pick them up.
3. Why Nintendo didn't create supply constrains to Europe to be able to supply more to NA? Is because of the competition in the market. Supply constrains make you lose sales and the competition is much harder in Europe. In order to keep competing and gaining foothold, Nintendo can't afford supply constrains.
4. According to Pachters conspiracy theory, Nintendo should be shipping "the additional amount of Wiis" to Japan.

@Capulous: Actually, you're off with your control comment, Wiis main selling point is the games. The only reason Balance Board sells, is Wii Fit.

I'm not sure about that.  I don't believe Wii Fit would sell that well if it didn't have the balance board for the interaction.  What is the reason the GC did so so poorly compared to what the Wii is doing now?

@Capulous: The difference is the software. No Wii Sports or Wii Fit. Also MKWii is highly improved version, that targets larger audience and makes good use of motion controls. If Wiis main selling point would have been the controls, it would have stopped selling ages ago, like some people predicted in 2006 and 2007.
Without a doubt, the newness factor sold the in the beginning, but it quickly turned into the games selling the systems, which is supported also by the software sales.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I disagree with you.  I believe the new controls and new interaction with the games based on these controls are the main reason for the success of the Wii.  Why do you think Microsoft and Sony are working on motion controls similar to the Wii's.

Here's how it works. I have the greatest console of all time, it's called the Rubangtendo. There's only one. This is the smallest supply can possibly be. This artificially raises the demand to near infinity. People are offering me BILLIONS for this thing. But I won't give it to them. I'm waiting for demand to increase so I can charge a trillion dollars for it.

I lol'd and almost pissed my self.

@bdbdbd / Capulous: You're both sort of correct. There's little chance that the wiimote or balance board would do as well as they do without unique software to drive them.

@Rubang: I'm not interested unless it's rhombus-shaped and smells of hazelnut.

If anybody is interested, Iwata is more or less paraphrasing one of the key precepts of Blue Ocean Strategy: set the right price from the beginning and stick to it. He's absolutely correct, too, about value assessment in regards to price. While those of us who already have a product look at a price drop as a welcoming invitation to new users, potential new users often see a price drop as an indicator that a product's value has dropped and that the price will continue to drop as a result.

I actually wrote a parable of price once explaining the phenomenon and posted it on this site. Basically, the more the price drops, the more reluctant the already reluctant become to invest in your product. Once the price has hit what you might call their "minimum value price point", then they'll get it regardless of future price drops. But until then, they will hold out as long as a price drop has occurred and is likely to occur again.

The converse effect, where the product does not receive a price drop, results in the opposite reaction by consumers. Instead of waiting for a lower price, their standards go UP and they approach a "maximum value price point" instead, where they decide that the product is sufficiently valuable enough to actually pay its asking price to get it. The Blue Ocean Strategy focuses heavily on getting people to adjust their price expectations in favor of your chosen price point, the key point in that drive being a price that's already "pretty close" to what the vast majority is willing to pay for it anyway.

Yeah, what everyone else said (I hate coming late to threads)

@Capulous: Well, you actually really don't seem to disagree with me. You just look the thing upside down.
It's the part of interaction. What's the biggest complain you see about 3rd parties and Wii controls? That the games don't use the controls. Which means that controls are "the" thing?
Now, 3rd parties do use the controls, they just usually don't implement them properly, which results in bad interaction.
What people actually want, is new games made possible by Wii and new kind of interaction for games, made possible by Wiis controls.
It's no different from what it was in the 90's; the games were in 3D only after there was a 3D controller. People didn't buy consoles for their new controls, but the games they could play with them. Think about SM64 with D-pad.

@Gnac: Of course there's a possibility. If you're familiar with the second rule of thermodynamics, you'll know that anything is possible. But just because there's a possibility that pigs fly, doesn't mean we well ever see them fly.
It's a little same thing with Wii Remote and Balance Board, since we have a large number of peripherals that don't even remotedly touch their popularity, it's extremely unlikely, that either would have had similar success without the proprietary software.