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jarrod on 10 December 2009
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postofficebuddy said:
ioi said:

If you look at these two graphs:

http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=GC®1=Japan&cons2=PS2®2=Japan&cons3=GBA®3=Japan&start=37927&end=38004

http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=GC®1=Japan&cons2=PS2®2=Japan&cons3=GBA®3=Japan&start=38291&end=38368

Holiday sales from 2003 and 2004. Due to leap years etc, these two years fall closest to 2009 in terms of where the dates fall so you should be able to compare and see which weeks you can expect boosts.

In both 2003 and 2004, you can see that the next 3 weeks see consecutive large increases for both GC and GBA - exactly as I would expect to see with Wii and DS. Normal Wii sales this week would be about 55k so I'd expect something like 90k next week, then 150k the week after then peaking at over 200k in the week leading up to christmas. Now with Tales of Graces and NSMB driving hardware I expect more like 110k, 160k and 210k ish - same pattern as in my initial predictions that were made a few months back. What is interesting is that the week after (so week ending 3rd Jan) is that PS2 sees a large rise while GBA and GC see large drops in 2004 and are roughly flat in 2003. 2004 isn't actually the best example for GC and GBA as DS had just released which started to eat into GBA sales and GC was essentially dead so sales dropped off far more dramatically after the 26th Dec than I would expect Wii to this year, but you can learn things from these patterns.

So for PS3, you can see that Sony sees much smaller boosts in the next 3 weeks than Nintendo historically so I'd expect maybe 70k next week then 95k then maybe 125k for the week ending 27th Dec. With the release of FFXIII this will be more like 75k, 175k and 135k vs 110k, 160k and 210k for Wii. The week ending 3rd Jan will be interesting though - I could see both at around 150k potentially as Nintendo drops and Sony rises again slightly.

It will be interesting, but I think those expecting 250k+ in Final Fantasy week could be a little disappointed - 175k would be impressive imo.

While generally speaking I would tend to agree with you on most of your finer points I don't think we can look entirely at past trends here. This year just broke far to many standards as far as past trends are concerned. I don't think Wii is going to be looking at a similar holiday boost as it had in past years. Don't get me wrong I'm not trashing your analysis skills but I'm starting to think the argument about Wii reaching market saturation has a bit of validity. You mentioned that the baseline for Wii would have been about 55k this week, I don't think that's accurate. I don't think that between the SW3 bundle and NSMB the Wii only recieved a 45k boost. Plus you must consider the fact that there had to have been a lot of potential Wii purchasers who had their console purchase moved up by a few weeks because of this. And finally you can't totally discount the impact of increased PS3 sales have on the Wii. I know that a lot people say that they sell to totally different demographics but there's no way that there isn't some crossover between the 2. And as far as the impact that FFXIII will have, I'm done speculating on it. We'll know what it will do in less than 2 weeks.

I think you're too keen to discount Nintendo's historical holiday lifts... I mean really, this isn't something that will just apply yoy for Wii, it's a precedent set by virtually every past Nintendo platform, regardless of market presence (from GameCube to DS).  If anything, I'd say "past trends" will guarantee a big Nintendo lift and would've ensured 40-50k this week sans Mario/Musou, and honestly their post-pricedrop figures put them right back in line with 2007/2008 the past 2 months.  I'd guess based on the strength of their lineup and the general economy, they'll outperform 2008 but underperform 2007 for December.

PS3's set to have it best year yet though, and it's first year as a competitive console in the market.  DS is solid as usual, but PSP seems like it's slipping a bit compared to 2007/2008.  Actually, PSP's been slowing all year, with a ratio of decline almost identical to (pre-pricecut) Wii, but for some reason it's fall hasn't gotten near as much press (outside the GO's utter flop). :/