Why does nintendo ship limited copies of their games?

I went to Best Buy the other day, and I saw several copies of Pikmin 3 on the shelves. So I don't think there's a shortage.

 

That's because you didn't go to GameStop around launch day.

 

I'm with you on this one. The other cowboy stories of Nintendo trying to hype the game by creating shortage might have helped back in the day, but with Wii U's low sales numbers I can hardly imagine that Nintendo would try such a thing, they are most likely already happy that they actually sell the games that they put out there