albionus said:
I second that. I think the getting ready for the holidays idea largely explains the slower Wii sales. The 360 sold about 3 million last holiday so the Nintendo needs to be ready to do 5-6 million. Some analyst recently said Nintendo is revving up to 1.5 million Wiis a month. If the holidays are considered Nov/Dec with Sept/Oct as full sales months then Nintendo has 4 months including May to stock 2-3 million Wiis for the end of the year. That would mean Nintendo is taking 500k or so from 1.2-1.4 million Wiis which leaves us almost exactly with the current estimated sales. Others have already touched on the main reasons why to hold back stock for Christmas. Another reasons though is whoever has the best selling system gets lots of favorable free mass market media attention. That may not be a huge deal in the long run but I do know several cousins and such whose only knowledge about video games last Christmas was that some system with some new controller called the Nintendo Wii was outselling the Sony Playstation 3. Should the Xbox360 beat the Wii this Christmas that will make up a large portion of what many video game buyers know. Again I don't know how big that is market wise, but I imagine status conscious execs at Nintendo and MS are more worried about such things than is actually justifiable. |
