I'll copy a post I made on another thread, which, IMO, proves without doubt that they DID stockpile for Christmas:

"Of course they're stockpiling for Christmas. We have a lot of evidence for that:

1- They're claiming 1.8 million Wiis produced per month since around July, and as we know sales are lower than that.

2- They said supply will about double in Christmas [when compared to last holidays], and nothing points to that being the result of an immediate increase in supply.

3- They raised their shipment forecasts at least twice (combine that with number 1 above and the only realistic conclusion is that not all of their production is immediately going to store shelves).

Maybe there's more, but those three things (especially 1 and 3) alone convince me that there's major stockpiling going on. In the latest interview they say that Wiis take 20 days to get from factories to store shelves, so I bet that there are, LITERALLY, "boatloads" of Wiis currently crossing the pacific ocean for the holiday period."

Didnt Nintendo in the latest quarter results announce that the Wii has sold 13million units. That is through the end of September. That would be sold to retailers. With that in mind you can add 3.6 million more units for what they produce and sell to retailers in October and November. Since they wont be able to get all of December production to retailers before the end of the year (20 days in transit) only include 1/3rd of December production so you get.

13 million (Through September)
3.6 million (October and November)
600K (December)

So LTD that hit retailers and therefore sell to consumers is 17.2Million.

@reverie,

My first impression upon reading what you said was to take another look at stockpiling, but a closer look seems to indicate that this actually strengthens the stockpiling position...not the opposite.

Just looking over the last 2 months WW for Oct & Sept we see that Sept was around 1.2m (5 weeks or 33,213 per day avg) and Oct was just over 1m (4 weeks or 36,669 per day avg).

Now looking at this data the last two weeks of october were significantly larger than the first two weeks and had they not increased the total for the month would have been closer to 800k. This sudden increase begs the question of where that sudden increase came from, and even more interestingly it begs the question where exactly did the extra ~1.4m units go ?

1.8x2=3.6

Sept(1.2)+Oct(1.0) = 2.2

3.6-2.2=1.4.

Even if we want to play with the production numbers to simulate a ramp up there is no way it is going to ramp up in a way that negates the fact that more than a million units could have been shipped but were not.

The obvious answer to these anamolies is X-mas stockpiling. But I am still willing to listen to alternative theories provided they are sensible.

They began producing 1.8 million per month around July June, so actual numbers will be bigger than that:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a3FKYMLPMdoE

Nintendo, the world's largest maker of handheld game players, plans to keep monthly production at 1.8 million Wii consoles, after boosting the output during the three months ended June 30, President Satoru Iwata said at a briefing in Tokyo today.

So what Nintendo gave you a total through September of sold to retailers. That is the starting point.  So they produced/will have produced another 4.2million the last 3 months that will actually end up on store floors to be sold before the end of the year.

I dont buy the huge stockpiling of Wii theory that Nintendo produced them but didnt sell them. If retailers have stockpiled them they would still show up in the 13 million figure released by Nintendo for results through September.

I don't understand your theory. They were clearly producing more than they shipped, so where do you think all that production went to?

Thats not really massive IMO ... I was expecting ~ 2.5 millions ...

They were producing 1.8 million a month in June.  Their shipment figures through September indicate that they were shipping less than 1.8 million a month from July through September.  Why is this difficult to understand?

Soriku its november.. they only have about 3.6million wii's if they all sell out(which is possible) it wont get to 18million by the end of the year.

I can see you didn't read the whole thread. Believe whatever you want to :)