*Yawn*

Money is on the table.

Nintendo is the personification of the Mario & Wario Bros. with the coins.

They don't waste one red cent. Ne'er a penny is unturned.

Cautiousness was for Holidays 2006 when the idea was being tested out. It's fact now that Wii is on a roll so no need to be cautious in the midst of so much opportunity in Holidays 2007.

September's USA NPD for Wii actually grew from the uncanny summer to its highest number and then the just released October's USA NPD topped THAT.

VGChartz shows consistent weekly power from Wii in North America and Europe. Japan is either short-supplied by diverting to other regions or on a temporary ebb from buyer burnout or some other reason. Even still Wii's on top in Japan (save for this lucky week for the PS3).

Wii is just too strong and too many big games are coming out for Nintendo to sleep on the Holiday season. The original configuration (Wii with Wii Sports) alone is still moving sales since most people missed one last year and all throughout this year. There's backlog anticipation and new anticipation as the Wii spreads like a virus in the consciousness of people around the world.

Those who think Nintendo won't come correct this holiday season in the midst of all this are fooling themselves.

Nintendo simply doesn't leave money on the table. Just not their way. They always lowball their estimates. It's right in line with Wii strategy. Low expectations being blown out of the water by high performance. Dark horse style is how the Wii gets down.

John Lucas

I can probably find references if you want details, but the first was back in March, within days of the reference (which I assumed you were referring to). As to the problems in increasing production it was a few months later.

If the quote if not that old, then perfaps it is more accurate and takes into account the unexpected difficulty Nintendo had in increasing supply.

Well its not going to be a constat production rate like that. More likely there'll be about 20 million shipped by the end of the year and then 24 million by the end of March 08. Just normall how the holiday season works. A good 7 million for Q3 and then top it off with another good 4 million in Q4 of the fiscal year.

reverie said: omgwtfbbq Hehe. Well I think this is clear evidence against stockpiling. That's why I bothered to dig it out actually. The way I see it Nintendo have now confirmed that they don't intend to reach their shipment forecasts with a shipment explosion just for Christmas but rather with measured shipment increases. The very fact that they want to ship 5 million units in the quarter after Christmas takes a lot of oomph out of the stockpiling theory.

Then how do you explain that despite the fact that Nintendo are creating 1.8 Million Wiis per month, they're currently only selling about 300k per week (or around 1.2 million per month)? There's 600k unaccounted for. Not to mention that a few months ago production was reported to be at 1.5 million per month, but still sales haven't risen above 1.2 million per month.

Production simply doesn't ramp up that fast. Nintendo are really starting to produce but there hasen't been the increase in sales to show for it. So what happens to those 600k consoles that are produced but not sold? Obviously, these consoles are being stockpiled for November/December.

But don't take my word for it, watch Wii sales explode in USA throughout the Christmas season, and expect Nintendo to blow past 24 million sales by end of Q4 2008.

If Nintendo doesn't stockpile, how do you explain the huge increases in holiday sales for the 'sold out' DS in past years?

Every company that produces a desired product stockpiles for the most part. Products do not sell evenly throughout the whole year. They sell in patterns.

Now the question is : How much ?  How much consoles Ninty could sold in november (900k ?) and in december (2000k or more ?) in NA ? 

Some things I want to add (here my reference interview):

It takes 20 days from production to store shelf

t’s generally all coming in by boat from China. It takes about 10 days on the water to get to Seattle, then it takes about another 10 days to get them out onto store shelves themselves. That’s why the decisions about what we can actually achieve in the holidays were really affected by inventory that we’ve received already and how we planned to spread that inventory across retailers.

Production volume is allready set since month

I can’t give an exact number for November and December. We had to make our final decision on how much to produce each month for the holidays back in the summer. It takes about five months for us to increase the actual monthly rate of production. We’re at a rate now worldwide of about 1.8 million Wiis produced every month, and that’s going to sustain itself until we get on top of this. We’re trying to make decisions on almost a weekly basis about which market to ship the product to, because in Japan it’s a big success, and same in Europe.

Were they go is very variable, indicating that there is no stockpile

We’re really trying to follow each market’s performance. We review the performance every couple of weeks and try to have the inventory be as productive as possible, in other words, not to have it sitting in warehouse, but on store shelves. Each territory is doing the best they can to increase the sales for Wii and then fighting for the share of the available production.

How did Nintendo see the market a year ago?

It’ll probably slow down sometime in January, but what really surprised us in 2007 was that the holiday sales after the launch of Wii didn’t slow down in February or March. What caused us to fall behind was supply.

Now to VGC figures. A month is 30 days, so Nintendo producing about 420k a week. NPD would indicate (doesn't say it is so only indicates) that Wii is undertracked by ioi in NA, I say E.U. is also slightly undertracked. Lets just say overall the Wii is undertracked by only 10% (what is very well in the error range) that would give a sell through of 341 units last week world wide. Now lets say some retailers holded back some units for Galaxy (EU+US launch) and Black Friday (Highly likley) think about the 20 days the Wii need to go to the shelves. I would say if they stockpile, that pile isn't that big.

Edit: I put the Wii down to 19 Million EOY WW according to ioi datas on that time. I isn't that they couldn't sell more, I say they don't have more!

wii fit + ssbb will be a big combo on selling wii

They are definitely stockpiling. They shipped around 1.3M units per month for the last quarter while their production capacity was at 1.8M at the end of the period (Iwata already mentioned the 1.8M number when presenting the Q2 results). Also we have Bods telling us his Toys R Us will be getting around a 400% increase in shipments. That kind of extra shipments is not possible without stockpiling.