I still don't see the point in killing it off when it will still be popular enough then to keep it living and cheap enough. It doesn't make much sense. And it's likely that Wii buyers then wouldn't buy their next console until later (alternatively, until it's cheaper).

I don't know if the Wii will last as long as the PS2 did in the USA market place, but the highest 12 month peak for Wii to date, i.e. March 2008 to February 2009 came in about 25% higher than the PS2 12 month peak in the immediate aftermath of the drop to $200 in the May 2002 to April 2003. Its something like 8.7m vs. 10.9m by NPD figures if you look them up. DS in the June 2008 to May 2009 12 month period is at 10.9m as well by NPD.

By calendar year PS2 did over 20m units in its best three year period. I'm pretty sure it was 2002 to 2004. So thats ~20 million PS2s in its peak three period in the USA (36 months). To date Wii has been on sale about 31 months in the USA...and its over 20m. Even if Wii only did 200,000/month for June to October that means it matched the PS2 peak three year period at a higher price point ($250 vs $200 for every month except for Jan-May 2002). Here is the thing though: if you compared the first full three calendar years for Wii, it should come in at least 26 million. We don't even know if 2007-2009 is the three year Wii peak yet.

Since E3 I've been expecting a Wii price cut in the USA in Spring 2010. If they do that Wii could do another 7-11m in 2010 in the USA.

Right now for Wii I'd wager this is still possible:

2006 - 1.1m

2007 - 6.2m

2008 - 10.15m

2009 ~ 10.5m (2D Mario Game Audience is enormous, enough interesting projects to maintain momentum, no Dec supply issues for once)

2010 ~ 9m ($50 to $80 price cut offset by Natal/PS3 Motion tech and ~$150-$250 360 skus, and $250 PS3)

2011 ~ 6.5m (360 down to $100-$200, Wii down to $130, PS3 down to $200)

2012 ~ 4m (PS4 or 720 launches in Nov, Wii 2 launches Nov)

2013 ~  2m (PS4 or 720 launches)

2014 ~ 800k (Nintendo stops making Wii)

To me, thats 50m Wiis in seven years and the launch window in 2006. For PS2 even though I have to check on some of the numbers, and I'm estimating for the end, I would say even with a longer duration on the market it probably will be beaten by Wii because the peak demand will be much higher even though it will likely be supported for a shorter amount of time. I mean even DS is ahead of PS2 pace now by over 1m, and Nintendo has not cut price on that thing. Wii is ahead of PS2 by several million without a price cut, and at a higher price point, and more importantly it has already had a higher peak.

          PS2        Wii

2000 ~ 1m /  2006 1.1m

2001 ~ 6m / 2007 6.3m

2002 ~ 8m / 2008 10.15m

2003 ~ 6m / 2009 ~ 10.5m? (8.5m to 12.5m is the realistic range I'd wager)

2004 ~ 5m / 2010 ~ 9m (7-11m realistic)

2005 ~ 5.5m / 2011 ~ 6.5m (5-8m realistic)

2006 - 4.7m / 2012 ~ 4m (2.5m to 5.5m realistic)

2007 - 3.9m / 2013 ~ 2m (1-3m realistic)

2008 - 2.5m / 2014 ~ 800k (500k-1m realistic)

2009 - 1.6m

2010 - 900k

2011 - 200k

The only thing absolutely certain about the next Wii is that its going to be HD. Also if they disrupt the market once again it could make the Wii absolutely obsolete and a hinderance to that disruption. The philosophy of 20 years ago doesn't apply so much today because they have a different mindset and strategy than they did back then, hence the Wii.

Actually the Wii is very similar to the NES mindset, the NES was a disruption of its own, and many of the things that are being done now by nintendo are retreads of that era.

It wouldn't make the Wii obsolete entirely, it would still be the cheapest motion control system on the market

I dont know why you think the backwards compatability is a big issue. I've got a pretty reliable developer source who claimed that the reason Sony took PS2 compatability out of PS3 is because only 5% of PS3 users ever played PS2 games on PS3. It wasn't a compelling feature. PS3 is selling (or not selling depending on your perspective) based on PS3 software.

Wii 2 or whatever Nintendo's next system is probably will play Wii games, but Wii will sell on Wii games and Wii 2 will sell on Wii 2 games. The fact that you can get a Wii 2 for $300 and a Wii for $130 or whatever and play Wii games on Wii 2 isn't going to kill the Wii. PS2 played PS1 games, it was never ridiculously expensive, and PS1 would routinely outsell Xbox 1 and GC and DC through 2000-2003 in most world markets.

We will have to wait and see before saying Wii sales will get boosted, so far it looks like it's on a downards trend and there's nothing significantly big that could help sales go up again until WSR which comes in late July, so until August sales could be down a lot. Probably the last 5 months of the year will be better, but the following two months could end up being abysmal in YoY comparisons.

YoY Jan  +405K units
YoY Feb  +321K units
YoY Mar  -120K units
YoY Apr   -374K units
YoY May  -386K units

2009 YTD  2663K units
2008 YTD  2817K units

YoY Total  -154K units


The trend looks to be a downards one and June could be the worst month of the year so far. June and July will no doubt be down from 2008, but August could be up once again. Then September and October could be also down, but depends on the release date of Wii Fit+. There's, unfortunately, nothing big besides Wii Fit+ until October/November, so sales could be down by 1 million or more until the Holidays. Then it's not very likely for the Wii to outperform November/December 2008. I expect Wii to end at 2 million less than 2008, at around 8 million for the year.