Well, I'll finally chime in now about what I meant earlier about the challenges Wii faces this year:
My assumptions about this holiday have been heavily influenced by a report I read early in the year. I don't remember who wrote it (and can't find it now) but it was for some investment house giving advice to its investors. This was put out right after Nintendo put out that sales report at the end of January where they said they'd miss their Wii hardware forecast by 1 million units (and there was a subsequent drop of nearly 12% to their stock value in a single day).
At the time, just about every analyst was talking about the Wii experiencing a saturation effect in Japan. Even Iwata seemed to be on board with that reasoning because at the investor's conference at the time his only reassurance was that investors should not assume that the trend in Japan could be applied to the rest of the world. He said that you had to understand that in Japan people get tired of new technology very quickly and the rest of the world is not like that. Regardless, just about every analyst warned that they expected worldwide Wii sales to decline for the remainder of the generation.
Anyway, back to that report... The jist of it was that the decline in Japan was not just due to the population getting "tired of the new tech" as Iwata suggested, but that just about everyone with a high to moderate degree of purchase intent had already followed through on buying it. I'll use current numbers and dates to explain: The GameCube only sold 4 million units lifetime in Japan. The Wii has already sold 8.5 million units. Given that the Wii was at an affordable price point from Day 1 and that three holiday seasons have already passed, we can assume that close to 100% of those Nintendo-loyal GameCube owners have already traded up.
So who else can be expected to buy a Wii if GameCube owners are already accounted for? Well, a lot of people to be honest:
1) People who maintain some loyalty to Nintendo, but not to such a great degree that they were willing to spend money on their failed products. This is a big group, really. Nintendo, even during their dark console years, has always owned the handheld market. So this group is basically Nintendo handheld owners who didn't buy GameCubes but might buy a Wii.
2) People who do not have any appreciable interest or loyalty to Nintendo but might want the new experiences the Wii offers. Big group again. You don't have to be a Nintendo fan to want to try motion control or use WiiFit.
So that is two big groups that skipped out on the Nintendo console last gen (or are entirely new to consoles) but might make the jump to Wii this gen. However, 4.5 million of these people have already purchased a Wii. Out of everyone else in these groups, their interest in buying a Wii is so soft that they held out this long even though it has always been reasonably priced and just about every Nintendo franchise has been represented in the game selection. Also, a big chunk of both groups above bought PS2's last generation and since they haven't bought a Wii yet, almost all of that subgroup (except those that have bought PS3's) still have a PS2 attached to their TV at this very moment. And the PS2 has been very, very good to them.
On the other hand, the Sony situation is completely reversed: The report expected (as everyone on the planet did) that the PS3 would get a price cut this year and would likely be at a reasonable price point for the first time since launch. Sony has barely sold through to their last gen base at all. Out of 22 million sold (the base is somewhat smaller than this because that number includes replacements, secondary bedroom units, etc but still...), they've only sold 3.5 million. This means that although Nintendo might be expected to continue to attract the majority of new-to-consoles players to buy the Wii, they are largely screwed when it comes to attracting the millions of consumers who were around last gen who haven't yet made the jump to current gen. Nearly 100% of this group are current PS2 owners and haven't shown enough interest in the Wii to actually buy one yet.
When I initially checked out this thread, I thought (as I still do) that the 5 mil / 10 mil race is interesting. I assumed two things: 1) The Wii will have its worst holiday season yet and 2) the PS3 will have its best holiday yet. But even given those assumptions, I wasn't sure how things will play out because I didn't know much about hard numbers. Even if both of the above assumption were to occur, the Wii could still sell better than the PS3. It was Zorro's posting of last years numbers that made me make a call in favour of PS3. I hadn't realized that selling 1.5 million Wii's probably means that Gran Turismo 5 will be in play before the Wii's target is reached.
