Nintendo has said that holiday sales of the Wii game consoles have gotten off to a "fantastic start" but has warned that the console will be scarce.

So far, Nintendo sold 350,000 Wii consoles in the U.S. last week and the company is on track to sell 17.5 million Wiis in the fiscal year. This is over 3 million more than originally expected.

While the company has increased its production to about 1.8 million per month its production is stretched. Already Wiis cannot be found in many U.S. retail stores. Sales are defying U.S. retail worries that Christmas sales will be slow due to the weak U.S. economy.

More than 40 percent of Wii sales have been in North America and Latin America, while 35 percent were in Asia (primarily Japan) and the rest came from Europe and the Middle East.