Nintedo knows it has a money-making smash hit when they have people (mostly parents buying for Christmas) going out in snow storms and blizzards to buy the Wii this weekend. I live in one of the areas affected by the huge snow storm this weekend in the Eastern U.S. and around here we are expecting around a foot of snow, but the TV news station had interviews with people who had gone out in near-white-out conditions just to buy a Wii. It seems as though sales for the console will continue to be extremely healthy at least through the first half of 2008 and supply will most likely continue to remain tight.
@Just_Ben, It's not like the shift to 1.8 million happened overnight. That January should be 20% greater than October seems a stretch. 40% is really hard to believe. 60%? Well, I'm going to have to find more cash to short this thing.
And by then the production was 1.2 Million, now it is 1.8 Million Wiis/Month. Europe is only partially sold out, and last year the Wii was stronger in Japan. All these factors should give more supply to the U.S.
@Just_Ben, They will LOOK for them, sure, but why should we believe they'll find 700K or even 600K of them? In January-October 2007, the highest number of Wiis sold per-week was October's 130K/week. 600K for January would be 150K/week, 700K would be 175K/week.
Last year Wii did have an unusually high January at 436K, but that included a fifth week. DS had a very low month, since supply had been drained by such high demand in December. Seems a four-month January and supply being sucked dry in December will work against Wii in January 2008.
The reason the Wii sells so "bad" right now is supply, not demand. So I think its likely that people who couldn't get it before X-mas will look afterwards. Still snapping up all supply. 700k a month is high, but not out of the question.
Do people think that the Wii will sell 770,000 units in January when it sold 981,000 in November, a holiday month. What is the basis for this spike in the Wii's January numbers, it seems unwarranted. The price should be more in the 50-55DKP range.
As many others have pointed out on here, while they're producing 1.8 million monthly, they could have been storing a few hundred thousand of those per month to prepare for the holiday season (likely hoping that consumers will buy several games with a system as gift).
There's no way to prove this, but that seems to be the prevailing idea around here.
sam300posted on Wii (Wii) at 5:07PM PST on November 30, 2007.
WII cannot sell 1.8 million units in North america.
Here is why only 40% NOTE 40% of wiis have sold in Northamerican and latin america (including canada+ mexico).
even with stored wii's that would mean that nintendo would allocate 900K of December to the USA and maybe some more from stored units. But that is nothing near 900K more.
@sam300, I would like to say you're welcome, but your gratitude is completely undeserved.
They are selling out how much, really? 400k in the US and 200k in Japan. Let's be optimistic and say PAL buys 400k Wiis a month. That's 1M a month. Where's the 800k units from the 1.8M they supposedly produce per month?
Considering I raised an important point thanks for downbidding my comment. I agree in usual circumstance this would be the case. But right now Nintendo is selling out EVERY month since june.
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