Sales of wii if ninty could meet demand?

[shams]

StarcraftManiac said:

Hmmm, this makes me wonder...

Why not start fabricating 12 months before launch. So you have more then 10 mil in stock of your system... Cause; every system (most of the time) will sell through 10 mil. (Nintendo consoles I.E.D because they have the fanbase)...

That's a very good question, and comes to the heart of the development/release cycle of a console.

The problems with this are:

1/ You stockpile HUGE amounts of consoles - which are not being shipped or sold.

2/ These stockpiled consoles are not bringing you in ANY money - just sitting there, costing you money.

3/ It means hardware design/tooling/development has to be complete about 15-18 months BEFORE the release of the console. This results in the console being released with "older" technology (opposite strategy to what Sony uses).

There is also a general "risk", that it flops - and you are left with huge stockpiles of units that can't be sold. Or even worse, you discover a problem at release, and need to change all the consoles.

The upside, is you could have a MASSIVE launch - sell most of your units within a couple of months (and establish a lead that can't be beat). Also makes sense with marketing dollars (big marketing push, lots of units to sell).

...

I suspect there is a chance Nintendo could try this strategy with the DS2. No chance of them not selling, units don't take that much space in a warehouse, etc. More likely to be 6 months though - 12 months just too risky.