| TheSource said: Wii is Nintendo's biggest software market for the next year, probably the next two years depending on how 3DS grows (not looking good) and how Wii 2 launches. I don't know that they care about Wii hardware sales too much anymore so long as software sales remain strong. That said, Wii sales should perk up quite a bit on the price cut. Look at the lift the PSP had in the USA after its February cut - and PSP has a hell of a lot less momentum in the USA than Wii does.
If you go by Nintendo's forecast, you'd expect a split of something like 1-1.5m Wiis in Japan/ 6.5m Wiis Americas / 5m - 5.5m Wiis in EMEAA. Essentially that's: Americas: 10 Months at 350k shipped (3.5m), 1m in November, 2m in December. If you take the January - April avg of Wii in the USA, you get about 75,000 per week - I don't think 75k for the entirety of the Americas is too hard with a price cut. That's 6.5m. EMEAA: 10 Months 300k shipped (3.0m), 750k in November, 1.65m in December. Again, not super high figures, doable with the price cut and some games. That's 5.3m. Japan: 10 Months 60k shipped (600k), 400k (Dec), 200k (Jan). For software, the 120m (and 11m copies of Mario Kart bundled) probably breaks down like this: Mario Kart (bundled): 11m DKCR, Wii Party, Epic Yarn, Metroid, Galaxy 2, other 2010 Nintendo SW: 10m Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Sports (debundled): 10m Wii Play 2: 10m Zelda: 8m Kirby (Hal): 3m Rhythm Heaven: 2m Minor Nintendo Games: 2m EA / Act / Ubisoft Games (excluding dancing): 20m Just Dance 1-3 & Kids: 10m Other Dancing / Fitness Games: 10m Zumba Games: 5m DQX: 4m (March 2012?) Lego Games: 3m Mario & Sonic: 3m DQ Collection: 1m ...and then 20m for whatever is left. Probably 3-5m for other Japanese games, 5m for THQ games, and whatever else I missed. There could also be sales for big sequels for major Nintendo / third party content we don't know about yet. The goal essentially isn't to push Wii back to 26m in a year, but to keep it as a big market. Wii / DS were a nearly 300m market last year for software - that won't dissappear overnight, so Nintendo's goal is simply to keep Wii / DS SW at relevant levels (>10m) for a while 3DS / Cafe come on as big markets. |
A very interesting analysis, nice one.
I think what this goes to show is that a lot of doom theorists probably haven't seen the bigger picture, or looking forward. Who knows how the price cut may work, but it's almost certain that Wii sales will increase. And, as you pointed out, there's a lot of Wii's out there, so that means a lot of SW (I believe that nearly 1.2mil units of SW were sold last week, or around 1 mil without bundling. And that the same as the PS360, but with no major game releases AT ALL in some time...)
More worrying surely should be for the PS360. Sure, they're ahead now, but after a price-cut, they will likely be behind the Wii. And, after releasing Kinect, Slim models, Move, steady stream of compelling SW, loads of advertising etc., and they'll still end up behind a 5 year old console which was outdated at the time, is surely a worrying state of affairs. Just what do they have left to counter the Wii? I bet we'll find out at E3...
Oh, as for the 3DS, looking at how the DS sold in its early life, there's nothing to worry about. It just needs a Brain-Training or something going for it, and the sales will sky-rocket. What that will be, we can only predict now.
