Let's step back fo a moment. This was never about November's (or October's or Septmber's) Wiis being sold in December.
The stockpiling subject came up in the spring of this year. At that time, many people became upset with the fact that the Wii had seen too little supply for months and months with no end in sight. The stockpile theorists answered this with their belief that Nintendo had opted to save up Wiis for the holidays, possibly a few 100k per month which would end up in millions of extra supply for Christmas.
So far, these millions have not shown up. Supply has increased steadily in line with Nintendo's production announcments, but there hasn't been the miraculous relief that the stockpile theorists had promised back in Spring and Summer. The quarter is not over, so that's all I can say, but if Nintendo won't ship significantly more than 5.4 million units this quarter (matching the current production rate), the stockpile theory is going to be debunked.*
*Vgchartz' numbers for the quarter could be a couple of 100k higher than Nintendo's if Europe sells out again (continental Europe wasn't sold out before the Season started). So I would put the bar for vgchartz' numbers to "significantly higher than 6.0 million units in this quarter" if Europe sells out or "5.5 million" if Europe doesn't sell out. So far we're at 3.9 million.
Hardcore gaming is a bubble economy blown up by Microsoft's $7 $6 billion losses.
