Nintendo Senior Director of Corporate Communications Charlie Scibetta wants to push back on those accusations. "It's definitely not intentional in terms of shorting the market," he told Ars in a recent interview. "We're making it as fast as we can. We want to get as many units out as we can to support all the software that's coming out right now... our job really is to get it out as quick as we can, especially for this holiday because we want to have units on shelves to support Super Mario Odyssey."

Far from intentional, Scibetta says the shortages are simply a result of Nintendo underestimating the interest in the system. "We anticipated there was going to be demand for it, but the demand has been even higher than we thought," he said. "We had a good quantity for launch, we sold 2.7 million worldwide in that first month, said we're going to have 10 million [more] by the end of the fiscal year... Unfortunately, we're in a situation right now where as quick as it's going into retail outlets it's being snapped up. It's a good problem to have, but we're working very hard to try and meet demand."

Scibetta's comments echo those made nearly a decade ago by Reggie Fils-Aime, who said point blank in 2007 that "there is no secret plan to store Wiis in a warehouse to spur demand." That's despite comments from Gamestop COO Dan Dematteo earlier that year. He said at the time that "I think [Nintendo] intentionally dried up supply [of the Wii] because they made their numbers for the year."

What about the NES Classic and 3DS?

Scibetta said it was "hard to say" how long retail Switch shortages would last. Gamestop's CEO said in March that he expects the system to be hard to find through the end of the year at least.

On the other side of Nintendo's hardware spectrum, the company has definitely created intentional scarcity for the NES Classic Edition. The $60 box was discontinued in April despite continuing demand from nostalgic gamers around the world.

"I think we could have done a better job communicating that was gonna be a limited run," Scibetta told Ars. "It was supposed to be for that holiday. We extended it actually because demand was so much, then we stopped producing it."

To continue to appeal to nostalgia-minded fans, Scibetta pointed out that Nintendo would be providing updated versions of classic games on the Switch for those that subscribe to their $20/year online membership starting next year. That said, Scibetta denied the NES Classic was discontinued to avoid competing with Nintendo's upcoming Switch classics. "It wasn't like we had to stop selling one to sell the other," he said.

As far as the 3DS is concerned, Scibetta echoed earlier comments from Nintendo executives that the aging portable line could coexist with the newer Nintendo Switch (even as other Nintendo portables quickly fade after a replacement is introduced ). Nintendo isn't eager to abandon the 66 million players playing more than 1,000 distinct games on the system, he said.

"We've still got a long runway there for the 3DS in our mind... We didn't focus on it necessarily in our booth or the Nintendo Spotlight, but we are talking about it here at the show. Metroid: Samus Returns is one that got a lot of reaction. As long as we keep making games that will power that system, we think it has a good shelf life."

"We have to be pretty strict" with fan games

Nintendo has also taken heat for shutting down popular fan games built around the company's familiar characters and properties. Scibetta defended those actions to Ars as a way of protecting how Nintendo's characters are represented.

"For a company like Nintendo, our IP is our business," he told Ars. "We have to be pretty strict in terms of how we see that come to life. A lot of that is just we want to see it done the right way, and we think our developers are the ones that can bring it to life the right way."

Scibetta pointed to Metroid Prime producer Kensuke Tanabe's work on the newly announced Metroid Prime 4 as a way of providing some "nice continuity there from the history of the series, so that's the way we want to see that franchise come to life." When it comes to integrating enthusiastic fan creations within some official way, however, Scibetta insists, "we certainly are open to suggestions and their ideas in terms of where they want to see the franchise go or ideas they have, but when it comes to development, that's really done in-house."