Micro$oft announced last week that there would be a Xbox delay, and possible shortage at launch. Retailers looked to Nintendo for relief. Here's the official word from the big N.

``It seems impossible for us to make any change to our GameCube shipment plan for this year given the limited production capacity,'' Hiroshi Imanishi, a director at Nintendo, told Reuters.

``We can't just shift some of the consoles which were made for the Japanese market to the U.S. market because such a move would upset Japanese retailers, who are also asking for more consoles,'' he said.

``It would be difficult for us to ship more than 1.1 million players this year in the U.S. market, but we will consider boosting production early next year if we confirm solid demand for the new console there after the release,'' Imanishi said.