Nintendo NES Limited Launch - Also Import Quota?

[ColecoFan1981]

I'm also wondering if Nintendo's NES launch was initially limited to New York City and then Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and other major cities across the U.S. in 1985 and most of 1986 because of the import quota (also known as voluntary import restraints) which places restrictions on how many goods Japanese companies could legally sell here per year?

~Ben

[Tanooki]

I imagine it may have been in their minds, but that test launch was truly limited because home gaming was basically dead and retailers treated it as poison. They had to find a nice way to dupe stores into carrying it as if it were a toy with a robot instead of a video game as history has said. They had no idea if it too would be ignored and they'd be stuck with the bill scooping up their dead dreams from stores, or it would be a winner and cleaned off the shelves. It wouldn't make business sense to make a million units and hope they move vs a quarter million and seeding them around to see what the response would be.