Five months after its worldwide launch, Nintendo’s Wii console remains a scarce commodity on both the European and North American High Street – and the platform holder has warned that the problems may persist for some time yet.

“There is a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of working on what we are producing and the numbers continue to rise but the product is so very popular that we may see the situation last for some time,” Nintendo’s VP of marketing and corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan told Game Theory.

“We are at absolute maximum production and doing everything we can. People are being really diligent about working with retailers to locate one but we are cognisant of the fact that a lot of fans are not able to get their hands on one yet.

“We are asking them to be patient and to know that we are working on this as fast as we can.”