It's funny how people don't realize how hard it is to ramp up production on something. It takes time to make sure it can be done without lowering the quality of the product. Kind of like at a chinese buffet, lots of food but not always great quality. Not even Nintendo knew how hot the Wii would get in the marketplace and so they probably projected they'd sell about as many systems as the Microsoft did in their first 12 months. So they planned on producing 5.5 mil and they end up having to produce 15 million.

Also, think about the DS, in its first 12 months it sold 8 million units. Then in the next 12 they sold 22 million, and then the next 12 24 million. So last year when they were considering how many wii's to produce on a monthly basis they also had to consider that they are selling more and more DS's every year and may have to produce more of those as well.

Another thing that is remarkable is that if you compare these numbers to ipods they are not that far off. There have been 119 million ipods sold since '01 which avg. close to 20 million a year. I don't know how many ipods were sold last year but if there was 24 million DS's sold it had to have been close to that. No wonder Nintendo is the third largest company in Japan.