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

[Sri Lumpa]

tokilamockingbrd said:
Japan is closer to the source of the supply chain, all of the factorys are in Japan. Nintendo can most likely produce them and get them to retailers in less than 3 days in Japan, for the US this have to ship it overseas which takes a while, then it has to enter the NOA supply management system in Washinton, which is then shipped overland, wwhich could take another week to get it NY.
I would bet that Nintendo was sending ALL of the systems it produced in Nov. to US and Europe thus the weak sales in Japan, and now Japan is consuming the Wii's hot off the press which mean none are gonna be on boats for a week or 2 and during that gap, that gap is what I am talking about... It might be 2-3 after Christmas until the gap hits. That is why they did the Rain Checks, they know Jan is gonna be SUPER Wii Dry...

 Actually, all of the factories are in China as nintendo doesn't manufacture their hardware themselves but contract it out to electronic giants so there is
 some delay for them to go to Japan too.

Also according to George Harrison in an article not so long ago (if you don't trust me on this I can always find it for you but it was discussed on these boards) said that it took about 20 days to get Wiis from the production site to the store shelves, with 10 days for ship transport and another 10 for transport from Redmond to store shelves by roads (the Wiis don't go directly to store shelves but have to be received in various distribution centers, possibly many of them for one Wii if using wholesellers and store chains distribution centers).

Nintendo can cut out at most half of that time by shipping by plane and increasing its Redmond workforce (so they can cope with the extra Wiis) but it only account for about 600k Wiis more (about a week and a half) and next week numbers would suffer (unless they keep doing it in which case it is indeed January numbers that will suffer but 2 weeks max, not the whole month).

Then they have about 290k of stockpile left if we assume that the 1.8M production  a month started beginning of august (this take into account lower Japanes sales in Sept-Nov).

As for Japan I do not believe that the sales were supply constrained as it was reportedas widely available back then but that following their fall and once nintendo was satisfied that there was enough supply until SMG/Wii Fit hit they started producing more US Wiis to get better numbers there before resuming normal japanses Wii production 2-3 weeks before Wii Fit launch because they expected higher sales then (though they probably expected higher sales for SMG too).

So 410k production for the week + 290k stockpile since august + at most 600k airshipped + 300-500k stockpiled in Europe since beginning of summer (number pulled out of my ass) give a maximum for this week of 1.6-1.8M, with 1-2 low weeks to come either next week or in January.

Given my prediction in your thread (predict this week's Wii numbers) of 1.35-1.7M Wiis I expect to have only one week very low and one just low before the numbers equalise again, so about half the time you are predicting as while I agree that they can pull some January units in dcember there is a physical limit that they cannot exceed and your estimate is higher than mine as to where this limit is.

Also:

tokilamockingbrd said:
It might be 2-3 after Christmas until the gap hits. That is why they did the Rain Checks, they know Jan is gonna be SUPER Wii Dry...

 

This doesn't make sense as a reason for the raincheck is "pay now, get your Wii in january".

It would make sense if they expected plenty of Wis in january as they would then have no problem using them for the rainchecks but if they are not going to have enough Wiis in January as it is then it is going to be even worse with the extra Wiis that will already be paid for with the rainchecks (Nintendo doesn't want to have all of January's Wiis sold via raincheck as they need to keep some freely available in stores to keep the interest high as people might lose interest in hunting for one without the anecdotal "I saw 5 Wiis at such and such store but they ware sold out in minutes" as such stories are like the lottery, making them sure that if they keep at it their luck will change*).

 

So given that Nintendo does need some Wiis on shelves, doing a riancheck if they expect sure low numbers is not so smart as it would make supplying the shelves that much harder.  

 

The only way it could make sense is if nintendo is trying to condition the US buyers into buying their Wiis weeks in advance via a longstanding raincheck program (buy a Wii today, get added at the end of the list of buyers, receive it when your number is up) as that would bean excellent way for them to plan production increases (we know that we need to increase production to 2.8M a months because we already presold that many Wiis).

 

 Anyway, I expect January figures to be about 1-1.2M Wiis worldwide with steady 1.8M february onward until Nintendo sees that it is not enough supply for the demand and gets its ass in gear to increase it again a few months later, at which point they will likely use the extra production to stockpile for xmas '08, sell out during it... exactly like last year and thecycle repeating until they stop selling out worldwide in the beginning of the year (whether that is '09 or '10) at which point they will consider price drops and other colors.

 

*but unlike "Wii Fad" proponents I do not believe that these shortages are the initial driver to begin the hunt but that these people want a Wii to start with but will keep trying if they feel they will manage to get one soon but might stop looking and wait for them to be freely available if they feel there is none available at all.