How is the Wii Hardware shortage? Xmas predictions

[reverie]

Ok, my viewpoint
- I have read all the arguments about why it's supposed to make business sense to sell something later that you can sell now for the same price. I still don't agree with any of them. Real money beats PR by a hundred times.
- Therefore I think Vgchartz is undertracking Wii sales and Nintendo will report a shipment increase for Q2 over Q1 and another increase for Q3 over Q2.
- I don't want to estimate the production increases because there's no reliable information about Nintendo's internals. So far 800k has been their high mark for Wii shipment increases quarter-over-quarter. I would not be surprised to see another raise of their forecast at all. I just believe that it depends on their ability to produce, not on secret storage.

Regarding Reggie's statement,
I'm not sure he was talking about month-by-month supply and neither about international supply. He was talking about the Holidays in the US, which to me is Q3 (4th calendar quarter). Last Q3 Nintendo shipped 1.2 million units to the Americas. If they beat that by more than 30 % (or say 66 % to 2 million units) I will regard Reggie's statement as vindicated.

When I said "those" I was talking about any and all units that are sold to retail, but not yet sold to consumers. The lingo would be "in the channel" I guess. I started calling them "shelve units" in a vain effort to get the point across to more people. Looking at the 360* and the PS3 I think that 1 million Wiis should be in the channel at any time to secure good supply. I think companies often measure the channel inventory in weeks, and something like 4 or 6 weeks worth of Wii sales should be in the channel at any time. This has obviously not been the case so far (outside of Europe), as vgchartz and Nintendo figures were matching almost 1:1 in July.

* Last Holiday season, Microsoft even managed to stuff the channel with more than 2 million units of inventory without inducing fire sales and exploding warehouses showering the landspace. 1 million Wiis in the channel would secure unrestricted supply for consumers.