Let's pretend that this line equals demand _____________
And this line represents the supply _________
you see that gap? Usually this leads to a price adjustment (levels off demand, increases revenues etc. BUT the big N says "np, we like the margins we are making and are in a comfortable place with demand being high because wew haven't seen this sort of thing in a while and even if we DID want to, there would be a horrible back lash from the consumers for a price RAISE so close to the launch of a product that Nintendo themselves say is worth exactly $249.99 so they instead decide to take the slow fix which is to increase the supply to meet demand. Unfortunately, this is a much longer process than changing prices and leads to fallout due to some people just wanting to get something new, but not enough to really effect things.
So why doesn't nintendo just produce faster?! With their company holding the record for consistently offer a system with the ever so important quality of stability, they would hate to rush and loose their economies of scale gained from a lot of product produced right the first time. In fact, rework costs 5 times what doing it right the first time does. So producing more is only available through expansion in resources which again takes time. If you consider that the expansion would only be put in place to meet the CURRENT demand, then it isn't economical. New hires are expensive and factory expansion is too. So what happens to those new hires and factory expansion once the initial system demand is met? they aren't needed anymore and cause negative ROI and eat up the capital of Nintendo with extremely small returns.
If you really want a Wii, you can get one. It takes a bit of extra effort though. This isn't a commodity product. Do your part to be a smart consumer!
This ends my lecture on business in a production setting while dealing with unseen variables.
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