| greenmedic88 said: You could always check the weekly chart sales to see that once off the holiday season spike, sales of the Wii have been well below 450k a week. That's all the empirical data I need. Anything beyond would be conjecture and theory. http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=Wii®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&weeks=70&weekly=1 That substantiates the well established and widely known trend that sales ebb in spring and stay flat in summer. Sales typically continue to drop in January, so we should be seeing the effect in less than a month, perhaps slightly delayed from normal due to the rainchecks sold in December. Note in the last three weeks sales went from 1.4 million > 723k > 566k. This week? No reason to believe those numbers will go up. But we'll see in a few days. |
True. The numbers of Jan 07 - April 07 averaged <250k a week. Of course at that time, they were only manufacturing 1M a month. They realized that that demand wasn't falling off as much as they thought it would, so ...
Nintendo increasing Wii production to flood planet
by Alexander Sliwinski Apr 26th 2007 11:00PM
Filed under: Nintendo Wii
It's worth noting that the alleged plentiful supply of Wii we expected Nintendo to supply post launch simply couldn't keep up with demand. So much so that major retailers called foul on Nintendo and reporting shipments of Wii to stores is still appreciated by readers. GI.biz reports that a Nintendo spokesperson has confirmed to them plans to increase Wii production are now in effect.
GI.biz was told, "For the first three months of this year we have been producing one million hardware units per month. We are increasing the manufacturing capacity and forecast to ship 14 million in this fiscal year to our distributors and retail customers globally."
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/26/nintendo-increasing-wii-production-to-flood-planet/
April 27, 2007 AP
TOKYO - Nintendo’s president acknowledged Friday that the shortage of the hit Wii game machine was “abnormal,” and promised production was being boosted to increase deliveries by next month.
--- And the flood was released. 14M in the fiscal year = 1M Apr.07 + 1.2M*11 more months. Not a huge flood, but demand during the summer, like you say will happen in 2008 would go down, right? Ummm... no. Instead the weekly sales moved up to just under 300k a week. So...
C3 News 10/28/07
Quick News - Given the massive demand for Wii worldwide, Nintendo has confirmed it is upping its production rates of the innovative console to a massive 1.8 million units per month in an effort to get a Wii into every household.
Well, that should do it, right? Not quite. But the holidays are over and demand is coming down. Yes. Note in the last three weeks sales went from 1.4 million > 723k > 566k.
Of course last holiday, it went from 600k > 285k > to the very bottom 3 months later of 151k. Or 1/4 of the max. 1/4 of 1.4 = 350k. Most weeks in the spring and summer were around 225k, 50% above the low. For this year that would make it 525k. I imagine N. is watching January weekly numbers carefully. If they don't fall dramatically, a step up in production will be needed, especially for SSBB, WiiFit and other ones needing Wii support.
On the other hand, if sales fall off to 1/8 the high, like they did last year for X360, then 1.8M is enough, since it will allow for releases and stockpiling for holiday 08.
To say that they predict sales at 1.8M a month throughout the year doesn't mean that much. As you can see from last year, they first predicted 1M a month, raise it so that in May it was up to 1.2M a month, then in Sept/Oct up to 1.8M a month. 3 different predictions, so to have a 4th one in 2008, isn't going to be that suprising.
Torturing the numbers. Hear them scream.
