I think when you said "valued at less than half its current sales" you meant "twice its current sales".
And VGCharts has it at 3.5 million worldwide.
I would bet on Nintendo changing the package within the year. Why? Because the minigames were nearly universally panned. Since remotes are no longer scarce, consumers will start wondering if those games are worth the extra money. I would bet on more polished games (variants on the ones out now maybe) being packaged in the near future (probably under a new name).
Another possibility is creating a new bonus with new remote colours when they're introduced, which would also take a bite from WiiPlay sales (though it's possible to keep the name and modify the games).
If any of these possibilities happens, it throws your entire prediction out of whack.
This stock remains an unimaginable steal. I honestly think this game can sell as much as 30 million copies. Wii stock is climbing towards 100 million, and Wii Play's attach ratio remains huge, yet Wii Play is valued at less than half its current sales. (VGChartz has the game at 2.5 million sales LTD between Japan and America alone. It is certainly well over 3 million worldwide.)
There is NO WAY sales just dry up and stop at 6 million. Even if this were a normal game, not a controller with a pack-in game, its sales trajectory now would indicate over 6 million sold by the time Nintendo sells 20 million Wiis. As is, we can expect over 8 million copies by the time Wii sells 20 million. For a prediction of 6 million to make ANY sense, people would have to be betting on Nintendo either altogether discontinuing the game, or turning it into a standalone title, and possibly releasing a different controller pack-in.
Let me explain why that won't happen. Wii Play's development budget is basically $0, because it was mostly a byproduct of Wii hardware development. And production and packaging of the game is only 20 cents or so, because its packaged with a remote. Marketing of the game is $0; no need to advertise extra controllers. So for Nintendo, Wii Play is basically a way to make an additional ~$7 of pure profit (after the retailler takes their share) on controller sales. So Nintendo has no motivation to EVER change the Wii Play business model, or spend the time developing a different pack-in. Not this year, or next year, or 2011. The current set-up turns Wii Play into a profit bonanza.
With that in mind, BUY THIS STOCK. I don't know when it will happen, but this stock is overdue to EXPLODE. Even if you think Wii will only sell 50 million units, its hard to value this game below 12 million, which is 100% profits on your investment. If you think Wii will sell more, there's no reason not to max out your position on this game.
I agree with the earlier comments about the huge upward potential of this stock. Don’t look at the review scores or even current sales numbers and look what this product really is. A controller with a 10 dollar/euro game attached to it. Does anyone really expect a lot of people to buy a Wii without at least 1 extra controller? So far I believe the multiplayer fun from Wii Sports to be its biggest selling point, and for that you really need at least 1 extra controller. And when you need one, why not add 10 dollars/euros to the 40 you already spend on the controller, it's really just a small price for an extra game. Sustained attachment rates at 40-50% of the units of hardware sold are a realistic estimation to me (and so far sales numbers show this to be a low estimation, with Media Create stating almost 1.3M units sold in Japan on 2.42M Wiis and NPD saying 249k units sold in the US on 360k Wiis) As long as Nintendo doesn't release similar packages with a controller combined with a game I don't see a reason why this percentage will see a huge drop. Without any releases of such kind been announced at the moment and knowing Nintendo expected themselves to sell 14M Wiis in the current fiscal year, sales of 5-7M units of Wii Play definitely seem possible up until the end of March 2008. Adding the 2.62M they already shipped up until the end of March 2007 gives a total of 7.5-9.5M units sold up until the end of March 2008, with a huge upward potential still left for the years to follow.
The only reasons I see that could prevent these numbers from being reached are: - Wii sales plummeting downwards, which doesn’t seem likely at the moment - Wii Play being discontinued by Nintendo, can’t see a reason why they would do this in the near future. I could possibly see them releasing Wii Play 2 somewhere in the future, but not just yet - Games like Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime changing the focus of Wii more onto single player games, which would decrease the amount of controllers sold, which in turn would decrease the amount of times Wii Play is bought. Judging the current line up this could partly happen, but with enough multiplayer games also getting released (like Mario Party 8 and Mario Strikers Charged) I still expect most people who buy a Wii will at least also be interested into those type of games.
So to me this stock is highly underrated at the moment and currently I have a healthy amount of shares in my possession.
I already had a lot invested in this game, and was continually buying more of it to clear out my time trust, but I just increased my position as much as the diversification rule would let me.
This stock is an absolute steal anywhere below 800DKP, and an appropriate value would be well above 1000DKP. 249K NPD in its third month in the US... Though it finally fell from its attach rate of over 100% down to 70%, it actually increased in weekly sales from March to April, 54K to 62K. (5-week March vs. 4-week April--all number derived from NPD).
Of course that attach rate will continue to come down, but its going to stay remarkably high for a pretty long time, in every region of the world. And it should maintain a huge attach ratio across the life of the console. 15% across 80 million Wiis would be 12 million copies.
But I'm thinking higher. 15, 20, 25 million would all be defensible predictions. Though that sounds insane, remember that this game won't sell like a game, but more like an extra controller. Would you be surprised if 40 million extra Wiimotes were sold on 80 million Wiis? And would you be surprised if half of those buying extra Wiimotes opted for Wii Play? There's 20 million copies right there.
Together, these countries make up about 90% of the world market. And it seems like in each and every one of these countries, sales are holding steady, rather than falling like a typical game.
At this point it has sold 1300K in Japan (Media Create), 893K in the U.S. (NPD), probably about 90K in Canada (Wii is especially popular there), and 800K elsewhere (VGcharts). That puts it at 3.1M as of the end of April. In April it sold 420K + whatever it did in Europe (probably another 180K). That´s 600K just in April!
With the 50% increase in Wii hardware that´s about to begin (see Nintendo News) Wii Play could very well sell 7M by the end of the year.
According to the year end fiscal press release from Nintendo (referred to elsewhere on this site) this title has sold 2.62 million copies WW as of Mar 31 2007
This forecast of 4.34 million seems to assume this game will follow a normal sales trajectory.
It is doing anything but.
In Japan, it has sold 20K copies every week of its release (vgchartz.com), a trend which is unlikely to stop anytime soon. In the US, it was the top selling Wii game in its first two months of release, beating hardware sales both times (NPD), and could actually sell more in April than March with higher hardware shipments. In the UK, it recently jumped back up to #3 on the all-format charts (http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=1451).
Fairly old numbers from Vgchartz.com have it at 2.8 million shipments already. I think theres a great chance it does 2 million in each Japan, NA and PAL by the end of the year, and stays on the charts for several years.
There's been a lot of discussion on other boards that Wii play is "ruining the industry." Apparently a lot of people are surprised that Wii Play is topping the Wii charts. Sharing my thoughts on this...
Wii Play was always expected to be a huge seller before it was even released. Wii Play's game stock has always been trading above a 4 million global sales prediction . Why? Because it is basically buying an extra controller (which most Wii players will do), then shelling out a mere $10 for some minigames that show you more of what the Wii-mote can do. Most of these buyers are likely just wanting another controller to play with their friends but then think, some minigames for $10? Why not?
Wii Play sales likely have no impact as a substitute for other games--so I think it would be incorrect to conclude that the product will take away sales from "real" games and that "casual gamers will ruin the industry."
Wii Play had a huge 371,000 copies debut in February according to NPD. That's a 11.67 P/FMS ratio not including the Japanese and PAL sales already.
Combine this with the 1,023,000 copies already sold in Japan according to VGCharts and Wii Play stock is looking pretty good. VGcharts also estimates 1.99 million copies shipped worldwide already. Note the VGcharts numbers only has 320,000 copies shipped for N.A., which is quite a bit of error.
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I think when you said "valued at less than half its current sales" you meant "twice its current sales".
And VGCharts has it at 3.5 million worldwide.
I would bet on Nintendo changing the package within the year. Why? Because the minigames were nearly universally panned. Since remotes are no longer scarce, consumers will start wondering if those games are worth the extra money. I would bet on more polished games (variants on the ones out now maybe) being packaged in the near future (probably under a new name).
Another possibility is creating a new bonus with new remote colours when they're introduced, which would also take a bite from WiiPlay sales (though it's possible to keep the name and modify the games).
If any of these possibilities happens, it throws your entire prediction out of whack.