Prediction Wii 40 million end of 2008

[NJ5]

TWRoO said:

NJ5 said:

Maybe we're not understanding each other, because I don't think it's as complicated as that.

My assumption is that at new year's midnight, their Wii warehouse is empty. Any units manufactured before have been shipped. Any error in this assumption will cancel out if we assume they have the same strategy for both years (i.e. non-shipped units from 2007 get added to 2008 but the same number is subtracted later).

With that assumption:

At the end of 2007 all produced units are counted as shipped. The same thing would be true for the end of 2008. The difference between those two numbers is what was produced in 2008, not more and not less.

 

Except that it isn't true.... by adding up the months of production it shows they do not and cannot clear everything out.

I dunno if you checked my old thread, but I have posted the table in other threads since.... by the end of 2007 Nintendo should have produced close to 21.9 million (give or take 200k) yet they could only ship 20.13..... so a whole months worth of production wasn't shipped until 2008.

I think I saw that thread, but I don't remember what the assumptions were there. If you're right, the error in my method would not amount to more than 0.6 million units, as that's the non-cancelled-out difference that I mention in the second paragraph of the post you just quoted (i.e. the monthly production boost).

Regarding your alternative method of working backwards from Nintendo's estimate for the fiscal year, it wouldn't surprise me if that has the same or bigger error, as they are usually conservative in their shipment forecasts.

In any case, this debate we're having is almost academic. We've had atleast three different calculation methods presented in this thread which result in the same ~45m figure; mine, yours and Sqrl's. It seems that that's the benchmark for Wii's sales at the end of 2008 (whether shipped or sold probably doesn't make a big difference so let's ignore that here).

Nintendo could still surprise us with an extra boost in production for the holiday season, but other than that 45 million seems like a good estimate.