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TWRoO on 17 March 2008
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Sqrl said:

Very well done indeed.

I do however, think your productions rates ramp up slightly too slowly. The production was reported to be just shy of 1.5m in late May '07, and I remember there was talk about the 1.8m as early as July but later it came out that there was a parts shortage that pushed it back into Aug. I'm having a hard time locating the article for the 1.8m in August part but I'm fairly sure that Reggie has said they hit 1.8m production during the summer which would be Aug at the latest. I also remember hearing a lot about 1.8m well before September but that doesn't mean a lot by itself. I do think the 1.5m production needs to be pushed back into Jun at least it actually puts it in line with the rest of the production increases right before a new quarter.

I do have to admit I'm confused why you said you don't think there was significant stockpiling in the other thread. By your unaltered numbers there were 3m Wii's stockpiled going into Nov '07 and I would definitely call that significant. Some of that is normal production but about 1.2m of it isn't. Similarly at the end of Feb there is about 2.8m stockpiled by your numbers with 1.8m of that being normal production and around 1m being stockpile. I guess it depends on the definition of significant but for me 1m qualifies. And if you were to move your production timetable back a month for 1.5 and/or 1.8 it would add another 300-600k to those stockpiled numbers.

In any case, I want to be clear that I'm not trying to diminish the work you've done as I think you've done a good job with it. I just don't fully agree with your conclusion for the reasons mentioned above. With that said I agree with about 95% of it.


I think you may have not totally understood what I wrote...(looks at your claim of 2.8 million stockpiled in Feb) The table shows a running counter of what has been produced, but in terms of shipments I assumed a month interval for the time it takes to ship, which happens to tie in ok with the numbers... so you should in fact look to the produced number at the end of January to see what has been shipped by the end of February.... thus I there is no "stockpile" as production is about 600k above the sales figures VGC has.(supply)

regarding the stockpile you mentioned in November, I didn't really look at monthly to monthly numbers as I would have had to estimate shipments by using VGC sales... so I meant little stockpiling (apart from Nintendo's usual quarterly holdover) was done from fiscal Q2 into Q3.

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For your estimations of when each production ramp-up happened, yours seems to make the least sense even if the dates ring a bell (they may only be ringing bells because other posters have mentioned them here though)
If indeed the increase to 1.5 was 2 months earlier, AND the 1.8 increase was also a month earlier, then that adds 900k onto all production totals after August, which means that they had produced 20.1 million by the end of November, and therefore would have had no need to air-freight consoles from Decembers produce, and would have had no trouble supplying early 2008.
Also by the end of January they will have produced almost 24 million already, whichhappens to be a hell of a lot more than were sold.

If that model were to be true, then it must take much longer than 4 weeks to ship normal stock... 6-8 weeks would tie-in with Q3 2007 and would involve Nintendo air-shipping Novembers stock so that it got there in December [instead of January]
However that then doesn't fit with the previous fiscal year, because if it takes longer than 6 weeks to ship stock, then Nintendo couldn't have shipped the 5.84 million they managed by the end of March last year (as they had only produced 5 million by the end of January, so a max would be 5.5)

Ahh, Damnit, I think I just figured it out.

Right,
-using the same months you mentioned Sqrl,
-and under the assumption that normal shipping takes 6 weeks,
-also remembring that the production isn't an exact value per month, and neither is it an average, but will fluctuate (and knowing Nintendo any figures they give us are lowballed) and may average slightly higher per month than what they say.

So although adding up the months comes to only 5.5 million produced (with 6 weeks to spare before the end of March) the discrepancies from vague launch numbers (2 million) and from slightly fluctuating (probably trending upward) supply Nintendo squeezed an extra 340k out before March ended and thus shipped 5.84 million.

For the next quarter... 8.4 million had been produced by the end of April... add in half of May (so that we are 6 weeks from the end of June) which is 750k, and you get 9.15 million... so again from the slight discrepancies 120k were squeezed out to make the 9.27 million shipped.

For fiscal Q2.... 12.9 million were produced at the end of July, add half of August (900k) and it comes to 13.8 million, which is 630k over 13.17 million that were shipped.
If we take that 630k and assume it was stockpiled.....

for fiscal Q3.... 18.3 million were produced at the end of October, add half of November (900k) and then add the 600k stockpiled from Q2, and it comes to 19.8 million, so the remaining 330k must have come from the air shipping (which would be the produce from the later weeks of November being flown in just in time for Christmas)

finally fiscal Q4 (incomplete).... there were 21.9 million produced at the end of December, add half of Januray (900k) and it comes to 22.8 million, which is presumably what had been shipped by the end of February (sales were 22.2 mil)

Whew! I think that explains it close enough. I think I will make a new thread with a revised table and explanation, and just link to this thread if anyone wishes to see the confusion I had to go through before getting to this.
Thanks Sqrl.
I'll make the new thread tomorrow, for now I will just update the table and post it below this.