DS Lite Stock Allocations

European gamers are all set to receive the pinnacle of handheld gaming consoles this Friday (June 23^rd); the Ds Lite.

One thing that had been worrying me recently was that stock allocation for the machine would be some what scarce for launch, due to the continuing high demand for the system in other territories. As we already know the Japanese have been snapping the sleeker machine up like there is no tomorrow, leading to empty shelving bays in stores where the console is meant to be present.

As predicted the Ds Lite was also a success in the America’s when it launched Sunday 11^th June, and as expected was a massive success, with the general consensus being that to secure yourself a machine you must pre-order. Though as reported a lucky few spotted that some stores had accidentally made Ds Lites available before the street date, which was subsequently broken, leaving I would imagine a few Nintendo employees rather stressed.

These recent launches left many naysayers pondering whether or not Nintendo would be able to secure us Europeans with enough consoles to for-fill our pre-orders. Though I cant say about other stores, yesterday I questions my manager about our Ds Lite pre-order scheme, to find out how many people have actually pre-ordered, and to see if we have been allocated enough units for the those customers.

It appears that at our reasonably small game’s store we’ve so far had thirty people put down their £20 deposits for the machine in both its black and white iterations. Now after looking at the shipment list yesterday it looks as if Nintendo should be sending us 18 white Ds Lites, which should hopefully be arriving to the store today.

The worrying thing is that the European only black DS Lites aren’t actually on the shipment list, which we thought was quite odd. Therefore we have no idea of just how many Ds Lite units Nintendo will supply us with in total, come launch. Hopefully Nintendo will split the batch 50/50 to allow us to cover our in-store pre-orders and leave us with a couple of machines spare, which no doubt the company will sell off in their bundle deals. If this launch goes as well as Nintendo expect it to, then it would certainly bode well for the company’s upcoming Wii console, which is expected to launch this side of the pond in this November. Let’s just hope those black DS Lite’s appear sooner, rather than later.