Nintendo of America's president and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime, has admitted that the DS handheld was unavailable in North America for three weeks following Christmas.

Speaking about hardware sales in January, when the PSP almost caught up with the DS, Fils-Aime said, “Based on worldwide production numbers, the Americas ran out of stock of Nintendo DS essentially on the 25th of December. And we were not back in stock until sometime the second week in January. So, effectively three weeks the consumer could not get their hands on a Nintendo DS.”

The sales figures for January show that the PSP sold 256,750 units, while the DS sold 288,000. Compared to February, when the DS outsold the PSP by three to one, that's a very narrow lead.

SPOnG's quite happy to admit that the 1,761,500 DSs Nintendo sold in December are bound to place pressure on stock supplies. Surely this far into the handheld's lifespan, however, Nintendo should be able to meet demand for the DS.

Fils-Aime also spoke about current Wii hardware shortages. With comments that mirrored those of Laurent Fischer last week, Fils-Aime said “...we all recognise that we have a limited period of time to address the issue, because more so than the core gamer, the casual gamer will get frustrated if they cannot get their hands on the product. And so, certainly from a total company perspective, we're making a full-court press.^†”

It wasn't all apologies, however. Fils-Aime did manage a not-so-subtle jab at Microsoft, saying, “360 is selling well only in one country: UK. Across the rest of Europe, it is not performing well. Wii, on the other hand, is selling exceptionally well all through Europe.” Good for Nintendo. But that's a situation that could change should it not get its production figures sorted out.

<sup>Source: San Jose Mercury News

† SPOnG’s fairly certain that this does not pertain to some kind of ironing machine for judges and juries, but we’ll stand corrected if you can give us a better idea in the Forum.</sup>