Retailers Ask Nintendo For Larger Gamecube Deliveries

Chain stores, including Wal-Mart, have asked Nintendo to send more units in order to make up for the expected shortfall of XBox units. In an interview with Reuters, Hiroshi Imanishi, a director at Nintendo, said "It seems impossible for us to make any change to our GameCube shipment plan for this year given the limited production capacity. We can't just shift some of the consoles which were made for the Japanese market to the U.S. market because such a move would upset Japanese retailers, who are also asking for more consoles." Nintendo plans to ship about 700,000 units to the U.S. for its November 18 launch, while analysts predict that only 300,000 to 600,000 Xbox units will be available for Microsoft's Xbox launch on November 15th.