Nintendo 3DS Shortages Unlikely, Stores and Analysts Say

The Nintendo 3DS, despite huge demand, won't be a victim of any sort of shortages, according to both retail stores and industry analysts, as Nintendo has taken a lot of precautions to ensure people will be able to buy the new handheld.

The Nintendo 3DS is now available around the world, with the company having launched it in Europe and North America at the end of last week, and the huge demand for the new portable device could mean that Nintendo will achieve its intended sales quota of 4 million units until the end of the month.

According to both retail stores and industry analysts, both cited by Industry Gamers, the Nintendo 3DS won't experience any sort of shortage, as the company took a lot of precautions in order to make sure people could check and purchase it.

While Nintendo 3DS pre-orders were nearly double than the ones for the Wii home console when it was first released, retail stores are claiming that there are plenty of devices to go around, and that anyone will be able to find the handheld, no matter the location.

Analysts are also confident that the first week sales figures for the 3DS will overtake the ones for the original DS, launched back in 2004.

"With an estimated 1.9M units shipped into the NA/EU channel, I wouldn't anticipate any stock-outs," EEDAR's Jesse Divnich said. "The 3DS launch in North America and Europe produced sales that Nintendo should be proud of. Given the awareness and hype over the 3DS, I'd expect week 1 3DS sales to surpass week 1 DS sales from 2004."

DFC Intelligence's David Cole said that the launch of the 3DS was a textbook example of a company covering its bases and that the general availability would aid it in becoming a very successful system.

"Nintendo forecast shipping 4 million units of the 3DS through March 31. That is just a huge amount of hardware. It would be an absolute mind blowing record if they sold out of all of them in such a short time. By contrast the Wii shipped 3 million worldwide in its launch period. In other words, we could see Nintendo announcing some records soon when figures are tallied."

When the Wii was launched, the system was in short supply for quite some time, with things getting extremely hectic near the winter holidays in the following years, when everyone wanted a Wii but you could barely find one out in stores.

However, with the 3DS, it seems that Nintendo has learned its lesson and is making sure there will be plenty of devices to go around.