Reggie keeps saying "we have 50% more supply for Oct-Dec 2008". October was up 53% over October 2007...but November is up over 100% in sell through (less than 1m vs over 2m) so clearly some retailers were hoarding as Nintendo isn't going to allow more Wiis to be sold in November than December.
Nintendo shipped 3.39m Wiis in the Americas from Oct-Dec 2007. If you multiply 3.39m by 1.5 you get 5.1m roughly.
So...800k USA October. 2.04m USA November. Another 420,000 for Canada, Mexico and the the smaller markets in Latin America roughly. Add it all up...you get 3.25m so far. That means there will be at least 1.85m Wiis sold in December (since demand isn't about to let up) plus whatever is still on shelves from Black Friday/November/earlier and whatever allocation retail has been hoarding. December is a five week month...so 4m does look unlikely for the USA at the moment.
My suspicion is they have closer to 6m Wiis for the Americas in this quarter (Iwata did say they raised production slightly in November and then again in December) in which case they should have 2.8m-3.5m consoles for the USA in December if the retailers saved some of their horde.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
