Phew, I really had it coming. Too much too answer everything really. Maybe some short remarks:

- FishyJoe, do you have a source for the DS being out of stock before Christmas 2006? I believe it became sold out by the end of the Christmas season until February 2007. I'm not really familiar with DS figures though, would have to look into the quarterly reports.

- Shifts of a few weeks wouldn't count as stockpiling in my book. That's supply shaping. Stockpiling would have to be a retardation above, say, 2 months. That's what people have been claiming here, that Nintendo put 100k. 200k aside every month probably since July or March or even January. We've been having this argument for the whole year and Christmas will be the last chance for those stockpiles to come out of their wholes.

- I don't want to discuss this with weekly numbers from vgchartz. They are a) not that precise and I prefer to look at the monthly or quarterly aggregates, and b) don't track shipments but consumer sales, which is a difference that becomes more important with every passing month. If you want to know where the "missing units" in Jul-Sep went I'd say that Nintendo hit market equilibrium in Japan in August and have filled the channel in the following weeks. Proving stockpiling with Nintendo's shipment reports has now become much harder. With an announced production of circa 5.4 million they would have to ship well above 6 million this quarter, otherwise stockpiling cannot be deducted.

- The point that I wanted to make regarding the stockpiling debate was that Nintendo expressly intend to ship 5 million units after Christmas so the argument "they have to have a stockpile, otherwise they could never reach their forecast" doesn't hold anymore. Hypothetically, 4.7 million for this Christmas quarter would be enough to reach the forecast and more than that will already top the forecast, something everybody is expecting. For this debate to end we will have to wait until the next quarterly report in January or even the Annual Report in April.

NJ5, Entroper,

I don't think that other report you refer to on Bloomberg says that they have been producing 1.8 million since July. Quote "Nintendo Co. said it raised production of the Wii player by 80 percent during the fiscal second quarter". That sentence tells me that from July to September (fiscal 2nd quarter) Nintendo raised their monthly production from 1 million to 1.8 million.

If you read the next paragraph, it puts that one in a new light (without contradicting it):

"Nintendo, the world's largest maker of handheld game players, plans to keep monthly production at 1.8 million Wii consoles, after boosting the output during the three months ended June 30, President Satoru Iwata said at a briefing in Tokyo today"

 

NJ5,
Um the paragraph I quoted said they boosted production in the 2nd quarter and the paragraph you quoted said they boosted it in the 1st quarter. I think that's quite a contradiction and that there is some typo in the article (there are more things that don't make sense in the article, like mixing Japanese and worldwide figures as well as quarterly and monthly figures). Iwata made that 1.8 million statement in October after presenting the 2nd quarter report so I guess he referred to the 2nd quarter.

My interpretation is that they worked towards boosting output during the 1st quarter, which caused production to be at 1.8 million per month during the 2nd quarter, but I agree that the wording of the article is not very good.

In either case, they're stockpiling units because even after the end of the 2nd quarter (+ 20 days for shipping), Wii sales were not at that level.

 

Reverie, I've heard the 1.8 number long before today. Production has been that high for some time, at least since August.

NJ5 said: thx1138 said: Didnt Nintendo in the latest quarter results announce that the Wii has sold 13million units. That is through the end of September. That would be sold to retailers. With that in mind you can add 3.6 million more units for what they produce and sell to retailers in October and November. Since they wont be able to get all of December production to retailers before the end of the year (20 days in transit) only include 1/3rd of December production so you get. 13 million (Through September) 3.6 million (October and November) 600K (December) So LTD that hit retailers and therefore sell to consumers is 17.2Million. They began producing 1.8 million per month around July June, so actual numbers will be bigger than that: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a3FKYMLPMdoE Nintendo, the world's largest maker of handheld game players, plans to keep monthly production at 1.8 million Wii consoles, after boosting the output during the three months ended June 30, President Satoru Iwata said at a briefing in Tokyo today.

I emailed the author of this piece back when it was first published and never heard back from him but I believe he made a mistake when he said June.  The very first line is " Nintendo Co. said it raised production of the Wii player by 80 percent during the fiscal second quarter".  Nintendo's fiscal year is April to March.  The end of the second quarter is the end of September not the end of June.  Based on when Nintendo made this statement I believe June was a mistake and should have been September.  Which makes a lot more sense when you look at sales reports.

ok guys, it's obvious no one's going to convince anyone else. The amount Nintendo are releasing are a full 400/500k short of production, and this means they must be stockpiling. When NPD releases December sales for Nintendo that are ABOVE the 1.8 million per month, then it will be shown that they are stockpiling, and we can resurrect this thread for some good ole fashioned crow eatin'

@Sqrl: http://begthequestion.info/

@KenBan:

When I look at sales and shipment reports, what I see is:

- average monthly shipments between April and June were 1.14 million per month
- average monthly shipments between July and September were 1.3 million per month

Your interpretation says that there was an 80% increase to 1.8 million at the end of the second quarter. How can that be true if production was already above 1 million both before and in the second quarter?

Besides, the rest of the article makes much more sense using my interpretation. For example, there's a paragraph which says:

The production increase, from 1 million units in the three months ended March 31, allowed Nintendo to ship more Wiis in the U.K. and European regions, Iwata said.

After seeing all the data and reports, I'm going with the stockpiling theory. To each his own, I guess we'll see who's right in a few weeks!

 

Keep it going lads... Nintendo will reign supreme this X-mas anyway. ;)

/me puts on a flamesuit for the rest of the year