Wii is now up YoY in every region. Significant?

[Demotruk]

MaxwellGT2000 said:

Demotruk said:

MaxwellGT2000 said:
Technically since 2008 was another complete sellout year, which made Nintendo finally up production more than they wanted to, 2008 couldn't technically "slow down", now the point that number people going MUST... HAVE... WII!!!! (also known as demand) declined that's debatable, in fact I'd have anecdotal evidence that would point to that claim, both customers coming into my store and the online fandom, but it's harder to prove without some hard stats.

The slowdown didn't technically start to happen till supply started to meet demand early 2009, when supplies were upped from Nintendo's factories. And the lack of key software started to catch up, but now things seemed to hit that balance and they seem to want to do a strong push this year, so its a wait and see situation if you ask me.

By looking at the rate of growth, the slowdown began in late 2008, after a drought of software. It continued to be up YoY until March 2009 but the ratio by which it was up was less and less from late 08 on, aside from briefly in the holiday season with the release of Wii Music and Animal Crossing (though the ratio was still worse than early 08).

Early 09 was only when it became directly visible, but Wii was in decline months before that. Similarly Wii has been resurgent for some time now but only in the last few weeks is it directly visible.

Uh... this isn't about numbers and percents and rates of growth, I was talking about physical systems on shelves just weren't there, there can't be anything more than max supply no matter how high demand is.

The problem is that Nintendo has contracts with companies that supply their parts for their systems, if there is just one hang up with one of of the part suppliers it can screw up production, its one of the disadvantages of being a pure games company vs an umbrella company that has factories that can make all the supplies in house, so to ramp up supplies it took some time, when the surge of supplies hit the market it was already early 09 and thats when people started to notice Wii's sitting on shelves, and sales ended up dropping YoY, 08 was not a bad year at all man some people might not have cared for Wii Music or Animal Crossing and so the year went out on a fizzle but 08 had Smash, Mario Kart, and Wii Fit all of which really pushed the hardware all the way through the year.

Most of the world did not have that issue. In Europe the sell outs mostly ended in mid 2008, in Japan it was earlier, Wii's were more easily available everywhere but the US.