TalonMan, Ok, I got it now. I didn't mean to say that you were lying. Sorry if that came off wrong! I just think that while many people believe that Nintendo reports "sold to consumers" they really don't and that's why I called it an urban myth, which should have been "urban legend" actually (sorry, it's not my native language), something that sounds cool and many believe but is not necessarily true. Regarding the footwork - I checked your numbers one by one and found out they were correct. Then I searched the margin for fiscal 2002 myself since you only had 2003 to 2005. So it was not exactly nothing. But I'm glad we can talk about these numbers now because I still think I have a point about them. You ask "How do you know 200k is enough for 10+ weeks". Well I do know because we're talking about the past (2002-2005) and I checked vgchartz' weekly Japanese sales data to compare if 200k actually was enough for retailers to fill their shelves. Here is what I found: Japanese GC sales per calendar quarter Q1'02 - 367,016 Q2'02 - 115,838 Q3'02 - 185,697 As you can see, in the quarter after Nintendo's 2002 Annual Report (Q2'02) retailers sold just 116k GC units, much less than the 240k I say were on shelves. You say it's just 8% of Japanese LTD sales, I say it's 200% of what retailers were actually able to sell in the following 3 months. Turns out 240k was probably too much stock in that quarter.
Hardcore gaming is a bubble economy blown up by Microsoft's $7 $6 billion losses.
