When we started seeing places like Amazon and Walmart list Spirit Tracks for 25$, many of us figured it was just a holiday related sale. After all, the game just came out in December and it happened to be a holiday season. Plus, it's too early to do a price drop right? Turns out the real reason for this is thanks to Nintendo overproducing the game.

While Spirit Tracks matched Phantom Hourglass for total sales during the first month, turns out the actual turnover rate of the number produced is much lower. In the first few weeks, Phantom Hourglass sold 86% of it's total stock, meanwhile Spirit Tracks sold only 47% of it's stock. It seems Nintendo thought Spirit Tracks would sell a lot more then it actually did. That being the case, many stores got overstocked and had to find a way to move the product faster. Hence, the 25$ price tag that seems to be floating around random retailers.There is no doubt the total stock created for the game will be sold, but it will be sold at a cheaper price tag, so the maximum profit predictions Nintendo had for the game most likely will be off.

The interesting note is these numbers are from Japan, courtesy Andriasang. Apparently, some publications in Japan have actually even been poking fun at Nintendo over this, and seeing as the cheaper price tag has obviously happened stateside you can assume this is more of a Worldwide overproduction, then just a single area.