I don't see them doing it either, but that was their stated intent. Presumably they have the supply to meet that target. Ergo I just don't see how there could be supply constraint.
That's enough supply for Wii-level sell-through for launch (the Wii racked up 2.7M units) and through to March - and we're most certainly not seeing Wii-level sell through.
They 'will' have the supply to meet that target, they don't necessarily have it all in the channel right now, and they won't necessarily be shipping a large proportion of that to Europe. To put this in perspective, after a month on sale, the whole of Europe has less Wii Us in owners hands than the Gamecube and the Wii had in their opening 2 days in the UK alone. Demand is sure as shit low, because you can walk into a shop and buy one right now if you want, but the supply and indeed the entire push in Europe is quite obviously nowhere near comparative levels. Retailers aren't sitting on warehouses full of Wii Us, we'd be seeing even more bulk discounting and hearing even more alarm bells if they were.
Totally deserved sales. You don't launch a console at that price with that line-up. Many of the titles in the "extended" launch period should've been there at launch, not that they're system sellers.
What were they thinking ? I'm still baffled. It seemed to me in 2011 they had a pretty good strategy, but then things fell apart.
If I look at Wii U and 3DS I fear they don't have a clue on what is going wrong, though with the 3DS at least they're (really) successful in Japan. How the fuck they want to ship 5.5m consoles until March is a riddle to me. I wonder when they will run out of excuses, when shareholders will have enough of the whole "This time we totally know what went wrong" shtick.
I think they've been fire fighting since 2010 to be honest...
They clearly weren't big enough to handle the demand of developing for both 3DS and Wii U. I think I read in another thread that they did make acquisitions and open new studios last year? Too late really, but we should see the fruits of that at some point.
I think the biggest impact has come from trying to launch much earlier than the competition on both fronts. We were hearing about the PSP successor for the better part of 2 years, and the announcement of 3DS came like a bolt out of the blue, while DS lite and DSi were still doing crazy numbers... They pushed 3DS out of the door with incomplete firmware and a roster of N64 ports that were in actuality, completed by outside companies... it took some time before Vita came along and we got MK7, SM3D Land and NSMB2, and games from partners like RE:R.
The Wii U seems similar... it's like they felt the best chance of making their 'staggered generation' idea work was to launch a year or more before the competition. The consequence of course is that it takes a long time to develop quality HD software, and although they have had a decent launch day lineup (IMO) - they have left themselves open to hype sapping reports due to more mistakes made while rushing it, and they are so neurotic about the announcements for successor consoles that they are keeping their true big guns firmly under wraps... a strategy that is clearly not working for them at the moment.
I'm hoping Sony's February event brings some megatons to be honest, because I don't think we're going to hear about Nintendo's post-Pikmin first party goods until the competition make some kind of move.