Just how many Wiis Nintendo could have sold this Christmas is hard to say. Certainly, however, it could have shifted a lot more than it will.

Indeed, analysts reckon that the Japanese group is leaving more than $1 billion on the table by failing to manufacture this year’s must-give Christmas gift in sufficient volume.

Does this represent a massive missed opportunity — or is it the necessary price of running a profitable video-games hardware business?

The answer is: a bit of both.

Nintendo is, in one sense, a very cautious institution. For the past two years it has achieved its full-year financial targets in only nine months.

This habit of underpromising and overdelivering on the fiscal front has seen it surge in value this year to become once of Japan’s three most-valuable quoted companies.

But it also begs the question of what might have been if Nintendo had displayed more courage in its convictions.

Its success, meanwhile, has largely been based on the vice-like grip Nintendo exerts on costs.

The chips that go into the Wii’s revolutionary “Wiimote”, for instance, cost a few dollars at most and can be bought off the shelf.

Compare that R&D effort with Sony’s decision to splurge hundreds of millions of dollars on the complex and super-powerful Cell processor that powers the PlayStation 3.

The upshot of these divergent tactics? The Wii has been profitable from Day 1— a near-unprecedented feat in the console business — while the PS3 has been losing as much as $200 a unit.

Making only just enough consoles to satisfy demand is another key part of Nintendo’s highly profitable low-cost business plan.

That means it runs the risk of underdelivering in terms of hardware supplies.

But that is understandable when you consider just how radical the idea behind the Wii was in the first place.

It was, after all, a games machine designed for people who don’t like video games — a bet that has paid off handsomely already.

Times Recommends

• Minister in talks with Saudis to protect creditors
• Premier Inn hits back in £29-a-room row
• Bankers hit back at 'populist' bonus supertax