| thismeintiel said: Well, it looks like VGC is pretty spot on with Wii U tracking, with it having ~460K on shelves. Same goes for 3DS, with ~940K on shelves. SM3DW is definitely overtracked, however. Nintendo has it at just over 1M shipped, while VGC has it at 1.5M sold through. So, it's at least 600K overtracked. On the plus side, Pokemon looks to be undertracked. |
The 3DS doesn't seem to be spot on, it is a little closer with some of the adjustments in the UK and elsewhere, but it still seems to be high outside Japan.
It would seem that they were expecting a much stronger holiday season in Japan than actually occured. Shipments were 15.76m by Dec 31st compared to 14.72m (VGC), 14.66m (MC), 14.69m (Fm) sales as of Dec 29th. So that means all the shipped/sold gap is in Japan (and more). With the way the 3DS has started the year in Japan, we are probably looking at very little shipped there next quarter.
Outside of Japan shipments are at 26.98m, and VGC has sales at 27.07m. Gap will be a little bigger because shipments are the 31st and sales are the 28th.
With all of this in mind, I think Nintendo will miss their revised 3DS forecast this year. They need 1.85m to hit it. Last year they shipped 1.24m in the fourth quarter. So, already it is looking unlikely, but the other wrinkle is Japan. Last year 52%, 650k, of the shipments for the quarter went to Japan. With the current Japanese sales numbers, there is no way this will be replicated. Even if we toss in a token 200k for Japan, that leaves 1.65m for the rest of the world. That would be a 180% increase YoY for those territories. Doesn't really seem like there is a chance unless stock levels in the west are extremely low.
