USA SALES UP!!---Average??

[Fastrabbit09]

greenmedic88 said:
And people will continue to assume any deviations from past sales trends are "supply constrained" whenever they fall short of expectations and estimates.

MS even hopped on that explanation when NPD figures showed slowing sales. There may have been a transition in switching out holiday bundle inventory, but this was not to say that the 360 was sold out WW. Currently with the impending price cuts ahead, sales haven't picked up the slack left by the "inventory shortage" one bit.

In regards to the Wii, I can see where the line of rationalizing will go. Brawl will result in a significant market share bump for Nintendo. It will very likely be a front heavy bump seeing as how Japan sales saw a rapid fall off despite maintaining respectable sales (842k > 300k > 151k).

Then it will be WiiFit that is "guaranteed" to command a significant market share bump for Nintendo. However, sales for Fit should be more stable over time due to the Wii Play/Wii Sports demographic it should appeal to. Will it be single handedly responsible for continued increases in market share for Nintendo? About the same as could be said for Wii Play, which stands likely to hold a higher attach rate than Fit over lifetime sales. In other words, not likely.

Then it will be Mario Kart, a game with universal appeal for any Nintendo console owner, but by this point is there a significant number of Nintendo fans who have held of on the purchase of a Wii that long to buy Mario Kart? By this point, about the only Nintendo fans who won't have one are those who still couldn't find one on store shelves almost two years later and didn't want to pay non-retail prices.

The 50% market share assumption many were making seemed pretty dubious back in 2007 despite the continual gains the Wii made because they fell under the assumption that only Wii sales would increase significantly. Currently, the only thing that has changed is that it looks even less likely to ever happen.

If Nintendo doesn't announce a significant increase in production in the next month (most were predicting by the end of March), then a LOT of the sales estimates people have been throwing out are statistically impossible. If this major production increase was in the works, there would be no rationale for keeping it a secret. If anything, it would be an assurance to share holders concerned about lost earnings. Then why not? Because any potential glut in inventory could result in lost earnings as well. And the one thing Nintendo has done brilliantly this generation is keep an impeccably CLEAN balance sheet which is unheard of for Nintendo.

the games don't matter for wii's market share...the supply hasn't caught up to demand...at this point if they do NOT increase at ALL this year, they will ship 40mil by the end of the year...that is at the 1.8mil/month rate

as for the increase, everyone is expecting APRIL for the announcement, not March, AFTER the fiscal year report...that is when they will announce it...they announce that they shipped over 24mil consoles in 2008 (thus exceeding projections) AND that they are still sold out and thus will increase the production to 2.3mil/month...this will make shareholders happy as wii prints money and will print more money in the near future

wii will hit the minimum of 40mil this year, and more likely 45+ when they increase production this spring

ps360 are at 28mil right now...if wii increases production to hit 45mil by 12/31, then it hit almost 40mil before holiday weeks...so it hits the 50% market share in oct/nov if ps360 can't sell 12million more consoles before the holidays

of course, many of us think nintendo will do more than 2.3mil/month or will do a 2nd increase this fall to push the number higher than 45mil, but we won't know until April...at that point you will see more accurate estimates of wii's 2008 sales and how likely it is to hit 50% in 2008...if not, it will def hit in 2009, as demand isn't slowing down but will only ramp up as more and more games are released