There is an oft repeated comment in this forum and elsewhere that nobody expected the Wii to do so well, not even Nintendo. Supposedly Nintendo was only shooting for GC type success, and were themselves blindsided by their own success.
Anyone who thinks this is missing how blantently obvious it is that Nintendo knew it and was ready for it. They sold 5 million consoles in the first three months. While everyone agrees that that is crazy good sales, most people miss that no other console in history has had 5 million units available to sell.
So to say Nintendo was not expecting a huge success would be to say that they created more capacity and more units than any other console launch in history, with the expectation said units would take a whole year to sell (GC took a year to hit 5mil). And keep in mind this is Nintendo, the company that always is so cautious; if they had five million consoles for the first three months they probably knew that ten million could have been sold.
