Nintendo has rebuffed accusations that it is milking the whole Wii shortage situation in order to fuel further demand for the console.

True enough that the Wii is rarer than rockinghorse droppings on the high street at the moment; that further supply is at best trickling onto retail shelves and that trawling the auction sites seems to be the only way of guaranteeing ownership. However, when a couple of articles sprang up claiming that some families had needed to spend £500 to secure a Wii for Chrimbo at least one gaming website smelled a rat and cried ‘fake!’.

We certainly don’t blame MaxConsole for reaching this conclusion - it does rather have the stink of a shabby tactic dreamt up by PR execs, and the Wii might be overpriced on sites like Ebay but it hasn’t reached £500 yet. Nevertheless Nintendo is having none of it: "We strongly reject and resent the accusation that we are 'PR-ing' stock shortages. We are doing all we can to ensure that the unprecedented demand for Wii can be met as far as possible in the run up to Christmas," a Nintendo spokesperson said in an official statement recently.

Hmm, well what were they going to say, really? But regardless whether the £500 Wii stories are manufactured or not Nintendo is certainly making the most of the Wii’s ongoing sales success and attendant shortages. Just this morning we see them trumpeting the fact that 350,000 consoles were sold in the US last week - which is 50K more than the same period last year. Meanwhile Reggie Fils-Aime chips contributes the not especially helpful factoid that he has been unable to find a single Wii on the shelves at the moment (tell us about it!) and that “…consumers are buying every game we can put into the system.”

Yeah, nobody likes a show-off, Reg. And we’ll say it once again - more powerful consoles are out there, folks. For the same sort of price and with much larger catalogues of must-play games too. Sheesh…!