Shortage attitudes: Microsoft vs Nintendo

A side-effect of the Nintendo DS's success in Japan is that the console managed to sell out–while the idea of a console selling out is old news, it's interesting to compare and contrast this to another high-profile shortage that we may be all too familiar with.

The Elderly Gamer notes the differences in the way Microsoft and Nintendo have handled their respective shortages, including a translation of Nintendo's apology. While there are similarities between the two–Nintendo's explanation that "We are shipping product every week", for example–the difference in attitudes, and the use of press to placate angry customers, is remarkable.

[Update--An interesting point to consider here is the manufactured Nintendo cartridge shortages which plagued the U.S. in 1988. By ensuring demand was higher than supply, Nintendo intended to increase demand even further--tactics which seem to work, time and again, yet are extremely bad from the customers' point of view.]