It's going to take Wii a long time to overtake 360 in USA

[mrstickball]

johnlucas said: mrstickball said: Well Wii hasn't quite gotten to half quite yet. Approximately 40% at current standings. Oh I long for the day when that happens but let's not jump the gun yet. A fatal flaw I think many people make with Wii is this thing about "novelty wearing off" & "honeymoon phase to be over". They keep expecting the day when "people come to their senses" & Wii becomes a normal game console like all the rest. Maybe it's because I so-called "drank the kool-aid" (they only had flavor-aid the cheap bastards!) but I'll NEVER think of Wii as a "normal game console". It's anything but. A lot of people can't understand the Wii is because they don't see its ability to entrance people. This thing is a runaway train. I don't think people have accepted this yet. There ISN'T gonna be a real period of true drop-off compared to the competition. They will ebb & flow like all the rest but they will consistently sell big the whole generation.

Not to sound sceptical, but just because a system has a runaway train effect in the beginning doesn't mean it'll continue at such a rate for it's entire lifespan. If you want to feel like the Wii will sell out for the next 3-4 years to get near PS2 numbers, feel free to, but I feel that MS and Sony are going to provide too much competition against the Wii to allow this to happen.

They ARE the 7th generation winners as much as many say that is too early to call. I called it. I foresaw what Wii would do for months before this launched. Years before it launched. Everybody else played it cautiously. I hate sitting on fences so I jumped off and said what I felt would happen. And everything I said came true. DS hasn't had a real drop-off YET since it got its momentum. ESPECIALLY in Japan. You need to understand momentum. It only gets faster the more time goes on. As much as XBox 360 has going for it, Wii has stone cold killers waiting for everyone this year that offsets that.

I called Wii winning in terms of profit this generation far before this website even existed. I have posts dating back to April '06 on Xbox.com about the Wii's runaway succuess that it'd have, and the PS3 failures even before Sony announced the prices. The DS isn't doing the "OMG WOW" numbers that everyone is claiming - yes, in Japan it's doing insane, but in the US/Europe it's still only around 20-22m. Don't get me wrong, the DS will do around 80-90m or even 95m this generation, but it's expected to do that. It's a good number considering it has competition. The Wii doesn't have these "stone cold killers" that will offset any momentum. It has great titles, but so did the N64. You need major 3rd party support to win, and the Wii has a bit of 3rd party support, but its not the wholesale support the PS1 and PS2 had that propelled it into the uber-sellers they were.

Um, then XBox 360 would have gone through TWO Holiday periods, right? The recipient of vastly inflated numbers two times in a row according to your logic. And STILL they have only sold 5.83 million in Americas according to VGCharts.org.

The 360 had 2 holiday periods, but has also had 14 months of non-holidays to go through to level the numbers out. The Wii has not. Again, 50% were holidays for the Wii vs. 25% for the 360. That has a major effect on sales numbers. As we go through the rest of the year, you will understand.

Honestly I just kept it flat like I did so people can get an easy picture of how things may turn out. I believe Wii will sell much more than that in a 16 month period. MUCH more. In one of my first posts here (check my history) I said clearly that Wii will surpass the 360 THIS SUMMER in worldwide sales. And I totally stand by that statement. Lots of people don't believe me & are scared to go out on that limb. I'm not that chicken-hearted. I'll say it even when it's not popular.

An easy picture isn't the right picture if your trying to be correct. Will the Wii sell more than the 360 did in a 16 month period? Absolutely. Worldwide it will trounce the 360 by as much as double. In the US, maybe by 50%. However, to say the Wii will beat the 360 by summer is rather out there, atleast by my standards. Your extrapolating numbers improperly to get to your conclusions. VGCharts.org's numbers are extrapolated. Your trying to say that the 2.3m number is for just 4 months, it's not. Its closer to 4.5 months, which is a 12.5% difference versus the 16.5 months for the 360, a 3.5% which can grossly effect numbers.

I said clearly that by end of year Wii's worldwide sales will see 20 million. 20 million in 13 months. So that 9 million something in 16 months comparison was purely for painting a easy to follow picture. I didn't mislead because I announced that these were constant rate hypothetical figures. Nothing stays constant like that. It all depends on games released, hype realized, supply in stores. Lots of variables. So I just put together a simple cross-reference. To me it's safe to OVERESTIMATE Wii not UNDERESTIMATE them (underestimating being a mistake that will prove to be haunting if it isn't already). They have delivered on their promise & claims made before this launch & it's paying off big time.

Overestimating makes me think your more like Michael Patcher rather than someone that wants to be real. If you want to predict that the Wii will get 14.5m more sales in 9 and 1/2 months, feel free to, but it's not tracking THAT high. The Wii has sold around 1m units worldwide per month since January. If it sold that much for the next 7.5 months, we'd get 13 million units + the holidays. There is NO way the Wii can sell 7m units during November and December. Could it sell close to even 5m? Possibly. However, even if it did 5m which would be near-unheard of, its still 2m off from your predictions.

Well didn't I say that Wii catches 360 THIS YEAR? Doing this in 2007 means it WON'T "take Wii a long time to overtake 360 in USA" as the thread title says. All this doesn't predict for the fact that Wii MAY improve its ability to get product on shelves and doesn't predict that demand MAY NOT ebb much even after supply is improved. This is what baffles everybody about DS Lite in Japan. It NEVER ends. All this time on the market and we STILL see sell-outs constantly no matter how much is on shelf. STILL lining up to get an update on a 3 year old system. Demand is beyond recognition. You have left the normal realm and have crossed over into the extraordinary. You can't use ordinary knowledge to comprehend the extraordinary.

Despite this, your assuming that because the DS sells well because of what it has, then the Wii absolutely must sell as much as the DS. This logic doesn't work all the time. Yes, the DS is putting up great numbers, but that might not (I didnt say it wont) make it put the same numbers. Using that logic, the PSP should of beat the DS, because the PS2 beat the GC by leaps and bounds. This proves your logic can't entirely be right, as Nintendo might not be able to do the same things in consoles as the handheld market.

I've been reading VGCharts.org for months now & have been keeping up with these charts for a long time. I know they are very accurate in getting their data. The 360 has been inching up very slowly while I see Wii move to next million number practically every month. It was in the 4 range in January. It was in the 5 range in February. It will hit the 6 range in March. And it will most like hit the 7 range in April. 8 range for May. 9 range for June. It moves quickly while XBox 360 moves slowly up the numbers. It sells but at a much slower rate. There's no excuse for Wii catching XBox 360 this early already. 4 months is hardly enough time to make this big of a dent in the sales charts. XBox 360 has been out a whole year and MORE but it's about to be passed by a system that has been out LESS than HALF a year!

This is because the Wii is a great worldwide seller, and the 360 is not (simply because of Japan). Remember, we were talking NA only until you decided to derail it. Again, assuming the Wii sells 1m a month, it still doesn't reach your 20m goal. The primary reason the 360 doesn't update/move the hardware is due to the fact that Media Create/Famitsu updates weekly, and since Japan is the #1 market for the Wii, it allows the totals to be updated/extrapolated much quicker.

Well there's a problem with that tally. They have already sold 5.5 million in less than 4 months. For them to then sell 5.5 million each subsequent year means demand has dropped signficantly. I know this was a hypothetical but those figures you put in there don't reflect how people gravitate toward each system. I look at things not from arbitrary number standards but reflecting on people's attitudes toward a product. The pulse of where things are. I put a number to match that desire. I look at averages as worthless honestly. I know ebb & flow happens but each month can be vastly different due to one game coming out. Look at PS3's & PSP's Japanese surge due to Gundam Musou & Monster Rancher. That opening week tally was ungodly! I think of games released and how people will buy them to calculate & project figures. And not just the big name titles either. I think of the sure & steady unsung heroes that move units. I look at the boxes in the stores and wonder how a person might be receptive to the game therefore buying a unit to play it on. Type of game and how it plays to determine how bystanders watching may be influenced to buy one themselves. I think of buzz factor. Hearing people of various walks talk about a product and checking the background of said people. Different age groups, genders, professions and the time those professions take up as well as nature of the work. I think of informed and uninformed customer alike. If certain hit games & good games are timely released it maintains a high sellout level & buzzfactor. I only look at existing figures to map out a direction.

We were talking AMERICAN numbers and if the Wii would or wouldn't outsell it, not worldwide. Its a certainty that the Wii will surpass the 360 worldwide at some point. If you want to look at something more than existing figures (which never chart the true merit of a console), look at what games are the most demanded on gaming sites like gamestats.com - their mostly PS3 or 360 games (primarily 360 games). Want a history lesson John? Study the Nintendo 64, Playstation 1 and Sega Dreamcast (in the US) - one can be amazed at a systems launch and initial sales and thought the system was going to do good or bad, then the opposite happened. This shows that analysis is exactly that - analyzing trends and trying to predict future ones and not just saying "well, since the system sold this much hardware, then it MUST sell this much later" - it doesn't work that way.

Well I'll say this to that. Wii's bad average will not be that bad and that's why these sales figures will probably turn out in the extraordinary realm. DS's low point is STILL higher than anyone else on the charts on a usual day. You also fail to account for XBox 360 possibly losing popularity to slow sales further so Wii catches up.

Actually, in Japan the 360 is up by 146% currently in Japan (look at my avatar), and is up 116% versus the first 4 months of the 360s launch. The 360 is increasing in popularity, not decreasing. You might want to actually LOOK and CHART the numbers of the 360 before you say it's losing popularity. 116% in the US and 146% are FAR from losing popularity.

These are my predictions: •Wii catches and passes XBox 360's Worldwide sales in the summer—I project for within the month of July for the exact month •Wii beats XBox 360's Americas region sales most likely in same summer in most likely same month. But definitely THIS summer and it goes without saying THIS year of 2007. •Wii will total at LEAST 20 million Worldwide sales by 11:59 PM December 31, 2007 AKA the end of the year.

Okay. If by your own admission earlier the Wii is selling 1m units a month, and it's supposed to surpass the 360 which is 4m units ahead, how is it supposed to do that? At 1m units a month, if the 360 didn't sell a system, it'd beat it only 1 month earlier in June!!! Do you honestly expect the 360 to sell nothing (or next to it) in the next 3.5 months!?