When the Wii was first launched in 2006 it was the hot ticket item of the year. Every time a store would get a new shipment in the Wii would fly off the shelves in minutes, and for many, many months it was plain hard to get a hold of a Wii. To say there was a supply-and-demand problem is an understatement.
Luckily, if what Nintendo says is true, the Wii U won’t have quite this problem. According to Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt, there will be more Wii U’s available on opening week than there were of the Wii when it was first released. More importantly, the Wii U will be replenished more often as well, so hopefully there shouldn’t be the problem that the Wii faced, of too many prospective buyers and not enough consoles over a long period of time.
Of course, just because Nintendo is planning on having more consoles manufactured and having them built more quickly it doesn’t mean that there won’t be any shortages. Moffitt had this to say: “(I)t’s impossible to exactly predict demand, and so I can’t say that we won’t have some shortages out there and that people won’t have to be a little patient with the replenishment truckload and shipments and boatloads to arrive.” So just keep an eye out, folks, because you’ll be able to get one soon enough!