November 21^st, 2001 (12:00am) - Japanese video game giant Nintendo (news - web sites) Co. Ltd. (7974.OS) on Wednesday said it would increase U.S. shipments of its new GameCube video game console by 200,000 units before year’s end, and said the initial shipment of units that went on sale Sunday would sell out by this weekend.

Nintendo shipped 700,000 units of the $199 console for the North American launch and now plans to ship 1.3 million units by the end of 2001.

A Nintendo spokeswoman said no decision had been made as yet as to how the extra 200,000 consoles would be allocated. The company has said it would ship 100,000 units to retail each week by the end of the year to replace the initial 700,000 units.

``I’m sure we’ll be completely depleted by the day after Thanksgiving,’’ said Perrin Kaplan, the Nintendo spokeswoman.

Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Heath Terry, who follows the industry, said the increased shipments would benefit U.S. game publishers with multiple GameCube titles this year.

He specifically cited Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq:ERTS - news), Activision Inc. (Nasdaq:ATVI - news), Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY - news) and Acclaim Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq:AKLM - news) as the biggest beneficiaries.

Analysts and industry observers estimate that Nintendo sold somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 GameCubes at launch. Including the consoles, games at $49.99 and peripheral hardware, Nintendo said it had $100 million in sales on Sunday.