Nintendo won't hit their forecasts. How did they get them so wrong?

[ICStats]

Slarvax said:

benji232 said:

Sometimes, I wonder if Nintendo just put's a couple of numbers in some basket and pick 1 randomly and then proceed to calling it their forecast.

Thaaaaat... would be hilarious! 

Now let's think about this for a second. Wii U sold about 3+ million in 45 days after launch (if I'm correct) and about 3.5 million at the end of fiscal year. So it kind of makes sense that they expected about 9 million. A lot of "system sellers" (as shown in the present, that didn't work) were releasing, so if they sold about a third of their goal in less than two months, it would've made sense to do that three times in 12 months.

Of course, they didn't expect to get such a long drought and that their games would not boost the numbers, or that their hardware wasn't so anti-buyme, so I would say they were delusional.

Sure right after launch they would think they were going OK, but by September they already had data showing 9 million was unrealistic.  They had the opportunity to revise and give more realistic estimates after September but they still kept forecasts high.