Not to be "that guy" but there was supply issues for basically all of 2008, and it was starting to meet demand by the end of Q1 2009, around this time in fact iirc, so it's similar situations and could easily be compared to one another I'd say.

what about the fact it has been supply constrained since the holidays, maybe that is what kept it down all year

I specifically identified the "others" region because that wasn't happening there.

Just like the 360 was up YOY in 2009, huh? :P

Remember, a big precentage of the year's sales is in the last quarter.

Yes, I quite understand that. I don't think Nintendo is gonna have another NSMB this December.

But that's not what this is about. This is about the fact that Wii is now selling better than it was this time last year in every region. If Wii is in decline, that shouldn't be happening. The truth is that key software has turned things around, and it was the lack of key software that had Wii begin to slow down in late 2008 and significantly so in early 09. More key software stalled the decline in the latter half of 09, but now it's reversed.

YOY, they've upped Japan's baseline significantly. Wii in Japan these days sells almost double what it was pulling a year ago, which is a great recovery considering the outright terrible software release schedule it's suffered in Q1 2010 (which is just as bad or worse than Q1 2009).

America and Europe are little lower, but then Nintendo also has lowered production YOY, and in both Q1 periods is basically selling out what they supply. So really, the lowered YOY in these regions is pretty logical...

Never underestimate the power of a new classic Mario game... I think this is what's almost singlehandedly keeping the Wii sales up YoY, way more so than the price cut.

It's gonna be fun to hear the excuses in the coming months to hear the excuses from the Wii haters in the industry when Wii continues to track above last year in the coming months. They presented the narrative to everyone that Wii was suppose to be fading awhile ago. Then it goes and has the most sales in history in a single month and has shortages for the following months. What are these poor people going to say now?

Wii should continue to get closer to last years levels, and eventually surpass them in the coming months. The only reason Wii is still down YoY is because the first quarter of 2009 the Wii was still riding high from the epic 2008. It wasn't until Q2 that the Wii sales started to stagnate. With the continued effect of NSMB Wii and the strong release titles coming, that shouldn't happen again.

Technically since 2008 was another complete sellout year, which made Nintendo finally up production more than they wanted to, 2008 couldn't technically "slow down", now the point that number people going MUST... HAVE... WII!!!! (also known as demand) declined that's debatable, in fact I'd have anecdotal evidence that would point to that claim, both customers coming into my store and the online fandom, but it's harder to prove without some hard stats.

The slowdown didn't technically start to happen till supply started to meet demand early 2009, when supplies were upped from Nintendo's factories. And the lack of key software started to catch up, but now things seemed to hit that balance and they seem to want to do a strong push this year, so its a wait and see situation if you ask me.

it's having an excellent year in Japan so far, keeping up in the other areas. Good job overall.

By looking at the rate of growth, the slowdown began in late 2008, after a drought of software. It continued to be up YoY until March 2009 but the ratio by which it was up was less and less from late 08 on, aside from briefly in the holiday season with the release of Wii Music and Animal Crossing (though the ratio was still worse than early 08).

Early 09 was only when it became directly visible, but Wii was in decline months before that. Similarly Wii has been resurgent for some time now but only in the last few weeks is it directly visible.