The Mackenzie story has some rather critical information about the quantity of Wii consoles planned to be released to the masses in North America for launch day, this Novemeber 19. Said Bertram:
"We're looking at a million (units) for North America at launch....If we get what we're supposed to get, this will be our most plentiful launch in the 15 years I've been at Nintendo. All signs are actually extremely positive."
"North America" includes Canada, of course, so there won't be 1,000,000 Wii systems just for the United States. But we'd get the lion's share, obviously. By comparison, Sony will launch the PS3 a couple days before with just 400,000 units in the same region.
Nintendo's goal is to sell four million of their new systems worldwide by the end of the calendar year. With that kind of quantity promised, North America will probably get another million systems in the six-week period between 11/19 and 12/31, so hopefully everyone here that wants one will be able to find one without too much difficulty.