Out of the Dallas Morning News comes a new article about why we are seeing a Wii shortage in the US.  According to Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan the issue is over the how weak the dollar is compared to the Euro. The article goes on to state that since Nintendo has to to convert the US sales into it's native currency it is receiving a smaller amount of profit compared to those consoles sold in Europe.  So it makes sense that Nintendo is shipping their excess consoles to Europe instead of the US.

For US games this obviously sucks because it's almost impossible to buy a Wii unless you want to hit stores as they open on Sunday morning.  The good news for US gamers is that the Wii market in Europe is full of product and demand has scaled back to traditional levels.  This should mean that we will see more Wiis being shipped to our stores and hopefully bring demand down as the market becomes more saturated.

I tend to think that the Wii will have the shortest life cycle of all the modern home consoles.  As you start seeing the Xbox 360 and PS3 drop in price more consumers will be moving towards those console because of their HD and 5.1 audio abilities.  Games like Guitar Hero III and Rock Band will only emphasis the Wii's weakness with it's 2.1 stereo and lack of song download support.  The Wii will also be missing out on Grand Theft Auto 4, Street Fighter 4 and many other big games because it is less powerful than the original Xbox.

Source:
Dallas Morning News - Wii shortage may finnaly be near an end