We are nearing the end of March and against all initial expectations, Nintendo Wiis are still hard enough to find that small groups of people are lining up outside stores whenever they hear of a shipment. To put that in perspective, last Monday marked four full months of Wii scarcity. What’s the deal? All we really have are sales numbers, and they are astounding: 2.3 million Wiis sold since launch in North America, compared to just over half that figure for the PS3 over the same time period (the two systems were launched at the same time). Overall 6 million Wiis have been sold, versus 2.67 million PS3s. The real question, however, is how difficult is it to produce 6 million consoles in four months? Or, more to the point, is Nintendo’s production capacity saturated?

The obvious answer is yes, but dirty rumours still persist that Nintendo has been intentionally holding back stock to keep up the appearance of scarcity. This is probably due to early reports of stores being told to save up stock of consoles in order to release them all in big blowout sales, but that’s a different phenomenon than Nintendo itself holding back shipments. A forum post by a semi-anonymous Vancouver reseller suggests that Wii supplies will remain limited at least through mid-April, and that recent shipments appear to be older production units—perhaps early cast-offs from the line that have been fixed up to factory standards. The implication? “There were (sic) no/minimal new Wiis being produced at the moment. My guess is they are changing production method or the cosole (sic) itself.”

Is Nintendo indeed altering its production lines to meet new specs? Another rumour that persists is that Nintendo is preparing to relaunch the Wii in April with new colours and possibly DVD functionality (something that has been promised by Nintendo for some time this year). But does it make sense to relaunch your product when you’re still having trouble keeping up with current demand? Or is the stemming of supply lines evidence that Nintendo really is holding back stock? No one on the outside knows, of course, and so anyone still waiting for a Wii at retail prices will probably have to wait some time longer.

Which, to be honest, isn’t so horrible. It could be worse; there could be a huge library of Wii games waiting to be played. So far, though, I’ve found few games that seem interesting, and the ones that did pique my interest get mixed reviews—normally a welcome sight in an industry where you get attacked by thousands of fanboys if you deign to rank their favourite game below 9.5 out of 10, but not so welcome when nearly every Wii game seems mired in mediocre, or worse, significantly flawed territory.

In fact, the Wii game I’m looking forward to playing most? Half-Life 2. On my computer. Any day now…

Update: Gamasutra has quotes from the COO of Gamestop: “I think [Nintendo] intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year. The new year starts April 1, and I think we’re going to see supply flowing.”