Demand Outstrips SSBB Supply News

American and East-Asian import retailers are claiming that they will only be able to satisfy as few as 15% of pre-orders for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It seems production shortages at Nintendo are responsible for the flagging supply-line of SSBB games onto the market.

Speaking to blog GameLife, Hong Kong game importer Play-Asia said, "Nintendo has badly cut pre-orders placed by all distributors and is only shipping very limited quantities into the market this week."

The importer went on to point out that they could only satisfy 15% of pre-orders with the amount of copies that they have been supplied by Nintendo. SSBB will go on sale in Japan tomorrow.

The situation is no better for American importers. New York based import retailer, National Console Support, said "Our Japanese and Hong Kong suppliers have notified us that Nintendo will only ship 25% of the game this week due to a production shortage." SSBB is due to go on sale in the US on the already delayed date of March 9th.

With such production shortages, don't expect SSBB to get to Europe any time soon. Nintendo of Europe doesn't even have the title on its release schedule for the first half of this year.

Rumours surrounding the reason for these shortages are bound to do the rounds. Are Nintendo rationing the supply to build up publicity? Are they stifling the game's distribution to ensure that Wii's Wi-Fi online gaming service isn't overwhelmed? One thing is for certain, none of this helps European fans of SSBB.