Nintendo Taiwan Claims Distributors Hoarding DS

According to a report on IT news site DigiTimes, Nintendo Taiwan has indicated that a number of distributors are hoarding inventory of the Nintendo DS in anticipation of the Christmas gift buying season. An unnamed spokesman from Hakuyu, the official Nintendo DS distributor in Taiwan, is quoted as saying that plans currently call for 10,000 units of the console to be imported into the Taiwanese market on October 30, following a consignment of 6,000 in September. However, Hakuyu claims that supplies from Nintendo are still “unstable” and that distributors from other regions are demanding more stock in the face of rising demand from consumers. Hakuyu suggests that the supply problem is being further aggravated by some distributors keeping back inventory for the Christmas period. Although there have not been major reports of stock problems in the West as yet, supply in Japan has been unreliable since Christmas 2005. Rumours had circulated that Nintendo itself was hoarding stock of the console in anticipation of the recent launch of Pokemon Diamond/Pearl but this was proven false when the games (which themselves quickly sold out) launched alongside only a small increase in weekly stock of the hardware.