re retailers stockpiling,
I can agree with that up to a point, because retailers can actually increase their revenues by selling their Wiis on Christmas rather than now, unlike Nintendo. There's still the cost to run a warehouse and cost of capital though, so Walmart and co shouldn't go overboard with that.
re wait and see,
I have been adopting this strategy for a while, after Nintendo surprised us 2 times with their last 2 quarterly reports. In April the Wii figure was much lower than anyone had thought, while in July it was reassuringly high. I'm not taking Vgchartz' or NPD's or Media Create's sold-to-consumers figures as the sold-to-retail gospel anymore, and I think that was reflected in my first post in this thread which referred to business sense and the last fiscal reports from Nintendo.
Hardcore gaming is a bubble economy blown up by Microsoft's $7 $6 billion losses.
