Avinash_Tyagi on 06 January 2008
So, to bring this back to the case of the Wii. Unlike these other systems I've been discussing, the market trends for the three consoles (Wii/360/PS3) have very solidly shaken themselves out by this time. The DS required a year to "take off" in sales; the Wii has never had a slow period in sales, ever; it took off immediately and has never looked back. That's why it's been the fastest selling system of all time. Wii sales this year look more like DS sales in 2006 than in 2005. For this reason, I believe it's inappropriate to apply a scaling factor of something like 80% to Wii sales for next year. You can't use a "sudden takeoff" model for a product that's already taken off!
The very success of the Wii this past year mitigates against a crazy increase for next year. (If you sell 5m in a year, it's much easier to double sales than if you sell 15m!) It's no coincidence that I'm predicting Wii sales in 2008 to increase by about the same amout as DS sales did from 2006 to 2007 (~35%). The Wii is already past the explosive wunderkind phase and approaching the mature, market-leading console position, where sales will simply be consistently good at all times. Remember, I'm already saying the Wii will more than double its lifetime sales next year. Going too far beyond that is just going into John Lucas territory.
Sales really don't change by all that much once the market trends for each platform have been determined. If you can think of an exception, it's probably a case from early in a system's lifespan, before the pecking order
The very success of the Wii this past year mitigates against a crazy increase for next year. (If you sell 5m in a year, it's much easier to double sales than if you sell 15m!) It's no coincidence that I'm predicting Wii sales in 2008 to increase by about the same amout as DS sales did from 2006 to 2007 (~35%). The Wii is already past the explosive wunderkind phase and approaching the mature, market-leading console position, where sales will simply be consistently good at all times. Remember, I'm already saying the Wii will more than double its lifetime sales next year. Going too far beyond that is just going into John Lucas territory.
Sales really don't change by all that much once the market trends for each platform have been determined. If you can think of an exception, it's probably a case from early in a system's lifespan, before the pecking order
I'd agree except we never got a clear picture of Wii demand this year, who knows how much it could have sold with adequate supply, no other console has had this much demand year one, so 35% increase over what?
If Wii was capable of selling 30 million this year then a 35 % increase over that would put us into 40 million territory, now if you are discussiong Nintendo's productuin increase then you may be right, but if you are discussing demand increase then we can't really say since we don't know what demand this year was
Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!! It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!! Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)
