It takes 20 days from production to store shelf. But the main problem with your sentence is: We have christmas ahead of us. 4.7 Million won't cut it. Hell the Wii had heavy supply problems in the U.S, the whole year so I would guess even 10 Million (WW) wouldn't be enough to meet demand. So sorry, there will be shortages, big ones.

Welcome to the forums :)

From the top of my mind, the things which you have slightly wrong in your analysis are:

1- production at 1.8 million per month started from around July June, not September
2- according to Nintendo, it takes 20 days to take Wiis from factories to store shelves (which partly cancels out number 1 ;))

So I'd say supply will be even bigger than you calculated. My prediction for the total number of Wiis sold worldwide by the end of the year is 18.5 - 21 million, depending on demand. Shipped numbers may be around 22 million.

Conclusion - more likely than not, there will be shortages in many places. If it sells out almost everywhere, sales to customers may be even higher than 21 million, so maybe I should have written 18.5 - 22 million!

Hooray someone new with basic spelling/grammar/reasoning skills!

On topic, see, the thing is, the Wii has had supply problems every month since it's launch. Now that Christmas is coming around again, the problem is not gonna get better, it's only going to become worse.

Nintendo may have stockpiled some units in reserve, but demand is going to FAR AND AWAY outstrip any supply they may have built up.

Good post though.

Three months ago, I also would have thougt Wii to sell 2 million + in Japan. But now the Wii is selling 30-35k a week in Japan, pretty slow (not to mention the other consoles). If this is the case for the rest of november (let's say wii will do 50k a week, and i'm being optimistic now), Wii should sell 185k-200k for the whole month, leaving 1 million consoles for december. Then when Wii Fit comes out, and sales will spike for sure, I think for Wii to go from 50k a week to an average of 200k-300k is a fair and plausible increase.

to cdude1034: are you being sarcastic about my grammar/spelling skills? Because I'm not Englisch or American, If my language doesn't sufface to your standards you can always correct me. If i'm interpreting your comment wrong, sorry for that, no offence.

Just going off of NJ5's numbers I am going to set an absolute MAX that should be available for the Holidays.

Ok it does take 20 days for shipments to reach the shelves but that doesn't mean units aren't being produced in that period and the time it takes to reach the shelf is irrelevent for the stockpiled units in this case. It should however be taken into account for what we do/don't subtract out and so the monthly sales calculation will start from June 20 (whichever week is closest) So our calculations should probably include June and will run through to current to again account for the 20 day shelf delay. Realize that any assumption I am making is designed to increase this number since we are going for a MAX.

1.8m x 5 (June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct) - ∑(monthly sales)

this simplifies to:

9m - 4.9m = 4.1m

With 4.1m stockpiled we can then add in the 1.8x1.35 (20 days at the end of Dec will not be able to account for holiday shipments).

And our final total is 6.53.

I would like to point out that production doesn't just ramp up all of a sudden and it is very likely that the months leading up to June there was stockpiling as well but without some sort of data to back it up its only wild speculation. But just for fun I will wildly speculate that it would account for at most another 1.5m and as part of that wild speculation it would put the max at around 8.03m for the holidays alone.

PS - Keep in mind that this is what should be available from now until the end of Dec and while it does account for the first weeks of Nov this number does not include them.

I agree that demand is higher than supply now. You can do your own local market research by calling stores in the area to see if they have any in stock. I was checking E-bay yesterday morning and watching the Wii close around $320 + $30 shipping. That indicates a very high demand with low supply.

I remembered seeing a few in a Target and also at a local Shopko a few weeks ago. I thought I would pick one up to sell on ebay/craigslist for a profit. I contacted all of the retailers and NONE of them hand ANY in stock.

Driving to a different town last night with my wife we went to the Shopko there and my wife asked if they had a Wii. They said they had one and that they just found out about 10 minutes before we asked (it was lost in their own store). So I picked it up and put it on craigslist last night.  I asked the man working "wow, this thing must sell real fast if I got the last one." he replied "Yes, it has been selling out the same day that we get it." I said "well you must not get many if they are always selling out" he said "actually we get at least 12 per shipment and as many as 25 about three times a week" I said "wow, it really does sell fast, are many people asking for it then" he said "all the time."

Interesting observation. I always ask questions about shipments times and such. It seems that most retail stores in the area have about this same shipment level.

form NJ5's post: "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".

Doesn't this mean the actual increase in production began from the first of july? Or am I interpreting this wrong Sqrl? Also, if there actually are 6.5 million consoles available for nov/dec, that should be enough to meet demand. Unless Wii sells like ps2 did in nov/dec 2002 in the US. Four million consoles were sold according to NPD numbers, pretty impressive.

My interpretation is that they finished working towards boosting production at some time during these three months (not necessarily the end of June, which is why I said "around June").

I think Sqrl's calculations are correct. They add up to around 22 million, which I believe is more or less the maximum number of shipped Wiis by the end of the year (unless they boosted production again without telling anyone).

 Its first year in japan PS2 fell to selling less than 10K a week for a while in Japan (right around this time in fact), so sorry no, you cannot judge sales based on this period since its a natural lull point

It is possible that is the date, but like I said, without info to go on since I am working towards a MAX I have to assume whatever will make the number the largest.