Nintendo to Increase U.S. Supply of Wii, DS Players

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co. will increase shipments of its top-selling Wii and DS video-game players to the U.S. in the fourth quarter to keep up with holiday demand.

More Wii consoles will be available in stores starting in October, Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo's U.S. operations, said today at a conference in San Francisco. Wii shipments should increase about 50 percent and DS handheld shipments are projected to rise about 10 percent, he said.

Nintendo is trying to avoid shortages that limited sales in the U.S. last year. The company ran out of the DS players in mid- December, Fils-Aime said. Sales of both game machines have continued to exceed the company's forecasts, making it difficult to keep up with demand, he said.

``We are in unforeseen territory,'' Fils-Aime said. ``Will this finally be enough to meet demand? My answer is talk to me in January.''

Purchases of the DS are tracking 22 percent ahead of last year, Fils-Aime said. In last year's fourth quarter, consumers in the U.S. purchased 4.46 million DS players and 2.85 million Wii consoles, according to Port Washington, New York-based researcher NPD Group Inc.

Because demand remains high for the current DS model, Nintendo won't offer U.S. consumers a new version that includes a camera and music player until ``well into 2009,'' Fils-Aime said.

The new DSi goes on sale in Japan on Nov. 1, the company said in Tokyo earlier today.

Third Version

The third version of the DS is aimed at protecting Kyoto, Japan-based Nintendo's dominance in portable gaming as Sony Corp. adds features to its PlayStation Portable machines and Apple Inc. enters the market with iPods and iPhones that can play motion- sensing games.

In August, Nintendo forecast it will sell 30.5 million handheld machines this fiscal year, twice as many as Sony's projected PSP sales. The DSi will sell for 18,900 yen ($179), President Satoru Iwata said at a briefing in Tokyo today.

Sony plans to start selling an upgraded version of the PSP in mid-October that has a built-in microphone and a screen that displays sharper images.

Nintendo said in July it had sold 77.5 million DS players since the first model was introduced in December 2004. In August, the company raised its full-year profit forecast by 26 percent, citing higher-than-anticipated sales of DS and Wii.

The Wii will probably widen its lead in the market for the latest generation of video-game consoles, outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 by two to one and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 by four to one this fiscal year, Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd. said in a report yesterday. The Wii outsold the PS3 and Xbox 360 by two to one last year, the brokerage said.

Nintendo will probably sell 26.5 million Wii consoles in the 12 months ending March 31, compared with 7 million Xbox 360 machines, according to Daiwa. Sony forecasts sales of 10 million PS3s this fiscal year.

Nintendo fell 3.7 percent to close at 39,500 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The stock, which more than doubled in each of the past two years, has lost 41 percent in 2008.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael White in Los Angeles at mwhite8@bloomberg.net.