Stock Woes Delay DS Lite Colours

More production problems for Nintendo as gremlins hold back the release of two-thirds of the DS Lite shipment. Full details inside.

There's no doubting that the DS is currently hot, so much so that even Nintendo is struggling to come to grips with the phenomenon it has unleashed. The second version of the twin-screen portable, the DS Lite, is due for release in Japan early in March, but already the company is apologizing that it's not going to have the numbers it would like available.

The DS Lite is slated to launch on 2 March in Japan in three colours: Crystal White, Ice Blue and Enamel Navy. Now the company has revealed that it's not going to have either of the latter two ready at launch, but they will hit about a week later, on 11 March. The delay is apparently down to wonky colour mixes, game site Kotaku reports.

No problem, you may be thinking. The white version is the sleekest of the three and that's exactly the angle Nintendo is pushing. But the delay of two-thirds of the models and other reports point to a bigger production problem that Nintendo will want to address as soon as possible.

Retailers such as Hong Kong-based Lik-Sang are already informing customers worldwide that they will have to wait if they want a non-white system.

"Supply throughput looks very tight; there is never enough of the good stuff on a launch day," Lik-Sang's Pascal Clarysse told Kikizo. He said it could take up to two weeks for the company to meet demand. While pre-orders for the DS Lite are roughly half those of the original version, they are also around double those of the Game Boy Advance SP before its launch.

According to the company, its sources also suggest that there are only going to be between 130,000 and 280,000 DS Lites to go around at launch. While that may seem a good opening quota, it bears noting that demand for the DS has been so strong that new units have been almost impossible to come by in Japan since Christmas, which has led to resellers and foreign DS owners hitting Japanese auction sites for major profits.

The usual highly organised pre-order campaigns that dominate Japanese retailers ahead of hardware releases have been largely absent for the DS Lite. Only recently did mega-chain Sofmap begin its campaign, Kotaku reports. Demand has been so strong that Sofmap stopped the campaign after only one day and even then it said it would not be able to meet all the pre-orders taken.

The numbers game is no doubt why Nintendo has yet to announce release details for the DS Lite in either North America or Europe, though sources close to the company told Kikizo that Westerners can expect the handheld as soon as mid-May.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games