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Although there are a fair share of nay-sayers and doubters surrounding Wii U and its long term prospects for success, there seems to be little doubt that it'll have a strong launch. Pre-orders are sold out at various retailers in the US, for example, while GAME told us a month ago that UK pre-orders are exceeding expectations. The only down-side to high demand is the resulting issue with supply, however, and a worrying report from CVG suggests that there could be issues in the UK.
It's reported that only 25,000 units will arrive for launch day in the UK, with two sources backing the figure and one telling CVG that its retail group won't be able to fulfil all pre-orders. That's certainly a low figure, especially as Wii sold 105,000 units in its first weekend on sale in the country, giving a stark indication that having only a quarter of that number simply won't be enough. A third source has said that it expects between 75,000 and 100,000 units, but admitted that it doesn't know "whether this allocation will arrive on day one or be distributed across a number of weeks".
Satoru Iwata himself confirmed, in an investor's briefing this week, that projections of 5.5 million Wii U sales up to 31st March were limited by production capacity, and reports of manufacturing being slowed by the complexity of the GamePad and a recent factory fire haven't helped matters. With a European release date of 30th November, we certainly hope that no gamers are left disappointed by unfulfilled pre-orders.
Source: http://www.nintendol...s_surface_in_uk
