is this the biggest week of the year in term of sales?

[Sqrl]

tokilamockingbrd said:
... they did stock pile... they took Japan's nov Wii supply and held it until this week, they also held some of Novembers NA amount... how else could you explain the sudden flooding of Wii's.

So here I am going to outline what most likely happen

1. Nintendo constrained Japan's supply in Nov. leading to sale of 30k for about 3 weeks.

2. The Wii's which were not sold there were shipped to US.

3. NA continued to sell at normal levels(slightly elevated)

4. Japan's Wii sales begin to return to normal

5. The diverted Wii are stockpiled in US along with one that were stockpiled earlier

6. Nintendo Triples distrubution workforce in order to get this insane amout of Wii's out in a shorts time.

7. Japan's sales increase above their normal level last week by selling Wii's that would have been shipped to US and Europe

8. The extra Wiis from Japan run out and Nintendo is left with a smaller supply than they would have had because Japan ate a larger share than normal in Dec.

9. American Wii supply stabilizes and chain returns to normal in late January JIT for SSBB.

One thing I did not make clear in my previous post was that some Wii's would still be coming just a lot less. that is why nintendo could promise rainchecks, because there would still be SOME Wii's most likely around 50%

Sales will be about 120k a week during the 2-3 dry weeks. The dry weeks will last about the same amout of time as they did in Japan. Remember Japan's selling season ends about 3 weeks after ours too.

Ok, first, everything here is a helluva lot more believable then what you were saying before, but I still disagree.

1) Reports from Japan during this period said Wii's were readily available. The dropped sales #s were from demand drop not supply drop.

2) This would require the Wii's be sent back to the factory, each unit to have its firmware flashed and replaced with the US version, and then sent out. This firmware flashing would be in addition to what the factory would normally do and likely slow down the normal production..which is counterproductive.

3) Agreed, numbers support this.

4) Agreed, numbers support this. But I think we have different reasonings as to why.

5) Do we even know how long it would take them to reflash these Wiis? It seems like it might take too long but without hard numbers or for that matter confirmation that they would even do this it is pure speculation.

6) Nintendo triples distribution force as part of typical holiday sales for DS, Wii, and all other products they sell.

7) This is where we really disagree, we've already hashed it out but I will just say that this would never happen in a properly functioning supply chain.

8) Same as 7.

9) Sames as #4.

 

The 120k number sounds about right for post holidays, and that number sounds like it is actually an increase from the normal sales. The average sales in the US over the course of July, Aug, Sept, and Oct was 118,903.35 units. So I'm not sure why 120k is the dry week.  I would normally expect 80-90k for these weeks as part of the normal post-holiday lull...but given how hard the Wii was to find this holiday I expect it to sell out still and 120k sounds about right.