I was just thinking about the sales of the wii and was wondering how many it will sell and when the major sales for it will stop.  Will it stop when it hits a certain number and pretty much die off or will the sales continue to get higher.  We have all heard the reports that 10% of the wii's sales are people who never owned a system last gen, so leaves us with 10mil gamers who own the wii. 

But where are these gamers coming from that own a wii, are they xbox, GC or PS2 owners.  I would imagine that 85% of the 10mil owned a GC last gen.  Does this mean that all the GC owners are just making the switch faster to next gen, considering the GC died about 2 years ago and once the GC owners have jumped to the wii will its sales slow down and contine with the 10% new gamers and 15% gamers who never owned a GC.  So that would mean that sales would only be 25% of what the system sells right now, if this is true.

How do you guys feel about this, do you feel i'm right do you feel i'm wrong.  Do you just want to swear and yell at me until you pass out.  Do you wish to make your own assumptions of whats happening or do you just want to sit back and watch me get yelled at by wii owners

I think your looking way too far into the numbers. Trying to break up sales into classes is simply impossible. You just got to go with the numbers your given. Wii has sold 11.5 million in about 10 months. And at the rate of shipments Wii will have about 22 million shipped by the end of March 2008.

But trying to break it down as simply the GC people buying it that would imply that after March 2008 sales would simply die. Don't think I've ever seen that happen.

What Wii is doing right now is selling to the masses and that's pretty much the only classification you can put it at. Who knows if it's selling more to hardcore or casual or new gamers or PS2, Xbox, or GC owners are buying it. All you know is it's selling at massive rates and those rates will continue as it continues to gain heavy brandname worldwide.

If Wii was simply selling to the GC base then you would have noticed this really early on. One the system still wouldnt' be sold out in areas such as America. Not to mention its not guaranteed that all GC owners will make the switch to Wii. Otherwise I can't split anything out as I would simply be speculating.

Just do a sum of all assumptions here:
A) Only 10% of Wii owners did not own a system last gen
B) 85% of Wii owners (Discounting the previous 10) owned a Game Cube
C) GC Owners are Fast Adaptors
D) Once all GC owners have adapted, sales with go down to 25%.

So, in essence, assuming this rate of sales continues, after the next year and a half when all game cube owners have adopted the Wii, sales will go down to about 2.5 million/year. This is your argument, rephrased and without a smile and sign saying "Hit me, I want attention".

oops

I do agree that gamecube owners are the majority of gamers from last gen to make the switch to Wii. But Wii sales aren't going to slow down once all these GC owners have made the switch. The Wii is much more interesting than Gamecube and appeals to many more people. Word of mouth and high praise from the media is a helping factor. The Wii is a huge phenomenon that is reaching beyond Gamecube owners.

Honestly I think your personal biases are allowing you to produce incorrect assumptions on top of flawed premises in order to justify your worldview ...

The Wii is currently selling primarily to existing gamers and which are most likely made up of a healthy mix of PS2, XBox and Gamecube owners; probably mostly made up of early adopters for those systems because (at $250) it is currently far above the price of what a typical console gamer is willing to spend on a system. What this means is that the current userbase is protentially made up mostly by people who never owned a Gamecube and possibly never owned an N64.

The Wii probably won't just stop selling because there is nothing on the horizon which can replace it and it has sold well enough to get a lot of third party support; even though the vast majority of the games will not be particularly good, the Wii will probably have more third party games released in 2008 then the Gamecube had in its lifetime.

Now, the question I would ask you is "What would have to happen in order to demonstrate to you that the Wii is hear to stay" or similarly "What would have to happen in order to demonstrate to you that the PS3 is in trouble"

The 25% is what i think it is selling right now to non GC owners, thats not to say that number won't go higher.  Lets all asume Nintendo has a max fan base of the original NES, about 85mil.  Add the 10% non gamers to that and you have 93.5mil wii's going to be sold.  I just think right now that 75% of all wii sales are Gc owners.  It will just take time for the rest of the Nintendo fanbase to come back home.

 Hmm....does this apply to the PS2/PS3 and Xbox/360?  I hardly doubt that the MAJORITY of GC owners has made the switch yet. 

So, it's not bright because there are 85 million potential owners, of which 1-2 million have bought the system, and they will presumably begin to pick up the slack as games like Mario come out?

I suppose you have a weird defintion of bright, but that is the purpose of summing up the argument, just to ensure I have it right. Well, also, your post was confusing, so I tried to represent it clearer.

"What would have to happen in order to demonstrate to you that the PS3 is in trouble"   If the PS3 falls below the sales of the xbox/GC at any one point after the first year on the market. 

"The Wii will probably have more third party games released in 2008 then the Gamecube had in its lifetime."   I could see this happening.

 "Honestly I think your personal biases are allowing you to produce incorrect assumptions on top of flawed premises in order to justify your worldview"    This could very well be true.