| Cumulative Production | Monthly Production | ||
| start | 2.0 | 2.0 | |
| Nov | 3.0 | 1.0 | |
| Dec | 4.0 | 1.0 | 3.19 |
| Jan | 5.0 | 1.0 | |
| Feb | 6.0 | 1.0 | |
| Mar | 7.2 | 1.2 | 5.84 |
| Apr | 8.4 | 1.2 | |
| May | 9.9 | 1.5 | |
| Jun | 11.4 | 1.5 | 9.27 |
| Jul | 12.9 | 1.5 | |
| Aug | 14.7 | 1.8 | |
| Sep | 16.5 | 1.8 | 13.17 |
| Oct | 18.3 | 1.8 | |
| Nov | 20.1 | 1.8 | |
| Dec | 21.9 | 1.8 | 20.13 |
| | |||
| Jan | 23.7 | 1.8 | |
| Feb | 25.5 | 1.8 | |
| Mar | 27.3 | 1.8 | 24.45 |
(I just added March... also the last column should be headed "shipments" but the cell has gone missing)
As you can see the shipped data provided each quarter lines up with the cumulative production column, if you go to 5.84 shipped, then go up the cumulative column by 6 weeks (between January and February) it is about the same.
so the 5.84 shpped at the end of March had been produced by the middle of January, similarly the 9.27 million shipped at the end of June were produced in the middle of April (between 8.4 and 9.9)
The odd ones occur at the end of December because Nintendo decided to use air shipping to get more consoles in before Christmas which is why I estimate the air shipping total to be about 1 million (without air shipping they would only have produced 19.2 million consoles in time (between Oct-Nov))
Similarly I do see some evidence of stockpiling before that Christmas quarter, because 13.17 shipped is not halfway between July and August production, so roughly 500/600k were held back as well.
If you add those two numbers together 1mil + 600k = 1.6 million, then add what they produced for those 3 months anyway (1.8 X 3) 5.4 million, and what do you get?
5.4+1.6 = 7 million, and guess how many Wiis sold in that quarter?
Suffice to say this proves that very little stockpiling actually happens at all, they do stockpile some from Q2 into Q3 which is normal (I imagine they wanted to stockpile a lot more than 600k but they were in a tight space with so much demand)
I have no say in the little weekly "stockpiling" which cannot really be called as such, I imagine Nintendo organises their shipments excellently so that more will go out for big game releases, but this will not effect the big scheme of things and they certainly won't be holding units back now for the next Zelda and they will not even be holding any back for Christmas for at least another 2-3 months. This will be proved if the next quarterly statement has a shipment between the April and May production numbers (which if it is still at 1.8m per month should be pretty much bang on 30 million)
