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Earlier in the month, Midway said it was having trouble getting its products to shelves due to the demand for Wii putting a strain on Nintendo’s production capacity. However, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has said that the problem is only short term, and that the Big N is working to lessen the strain as publishers look to take advantage of the Wii’s success.

“As every publisher talks about shifting over to Wii it’s creating this crush of production right now at our factories for software,” he said, speaking at a BMO Capital Markets conference. “What we’ve done is to ramp that capacity up and work with the publishers to ensure that their best titles get into the marketplace and [they] have a productive holiday. This is a very short-term situation that is effectively going to be resolved in a course of three week’s time.”

The company isn’t worried about suggestions competitors could move into Nintendo’s niche, producing casual titles and a peripheral that could copy the Wii, Reggie said at the same conference.

“The challenge that our competitors have is significant. They’ve gone down the path with very expensive machines where they lose money on the hardware on every unit they sell. They’ve gone down a path that makes it challenging for third-party developers to create content,” he commented.

“So our competitors have put themselves in quite a box. How they get out of it is a challenge – creating casual content for those systems won’t work. Not only because the ease of play won’t be there but the consumer won’t be there. I don’t think a consumer paying USD 600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product. So they have a significant strategic conundrum, and one that won’t be easy to resolve.”

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