^^It might sell 15 million...? What? Are you for real?

Easily at least 16.5 million.

actually it is 6 weeks, after this week has finished i suspect it will be 5.1/5.2 million for the last 5 weeks.....The strange thing is it could sell that many....last year the DS did 5 million in the last 5 weeks, the Wii has a similar demand level.

I personally think 19-19.5 million is probable.....that's an average of about 850-900k per week (for the 6 weeks) this week being posted soon (23rd/24th) should be 550-600k, followed by near 700k, then maybe 850k ish, then about 1 million, then 1.3 for the week before christmas (ending 22nd/23rd) then another 850k the week across christmas...that makes erm, 5.2 - 5.3 million in 6 weeks, and puts the Wii at 19.5 million.

There is little chance it will be less than 18.5M....as that would be an average of 600k per week, which as this week (ending 23rd/24th) will be close to 600k is a stupidly low number.

20 million is not so insane as you all seem to think, I like Nintendo try to keep my numbers conservatively realistic, John Lucas likes to be very positively realistic,  he does know where he gets his predictions from.

I think Nintendo could sell 5 million Wii's in the US alone this Christmas but I don't think they have that kind of stock.

Something important to note about black friday (from wikipedia):

"The news media frequently refer to Black Friday as the busiest retail shopping day of the year, but this is not always accurate. While it has been one of the busiest days in terms of customer traffic,^[1][2] in terms of actual sales volume, from 1993 through 2001 Black Friday was usually the fifth to tenth busiest day.^[3] In 2002 and 2004, however, Black Friday ranked second place.^[4] The busiest retail shopping day of the year in the United States (in terms of both sales and customer traffic) usually has been the Saturday before Christmas.^[5] In 2003 and 2005, however, Black Friday actually did reach first place.^[6]"

Black friday really is only the beginning of the insanity, and not always the pinnacle of it. 

^ so that's why you all think black friday week is huge.

i mean 2nd biggest day is good and all but it is only one day, even in America the week after black friday week is usually bigger according to the comparison charts.

If they can get their system sales up in Japan it's surely possible. They also need a lot of stock.

18-19 millions is the most likely number. 20 millions is possible but less likely.

Remember that last year Nintendo was planning 4 millions in 6 weeks but due the the wrist strap problems only shipped about 3.2 millions. Reggie said that the supply this year would be unprecedented so 3.5-4 millions seem like the likely minimum (unless they mean last year they had 3,200,000 units and the unprecedented supply this year is 3,200,001 units) which would put it at 17.5-18 millions (taking 500,000 off as being in transit since 3.2M is shipped not sold) as a likely minimum with 18-19 millions being quite likely and 20 millions a remote possibility.

Another way to look at it is that Nintendo said they have been producing 1.8 millions Wii since summer, which I will take to mean since the beginning of August as in June they were talking about a delay in production increase.

If we use a latency of 6 weeks between production and sale (transport by ship to the country then by lorry to successive distribution centers) it would mean that the increase in production would be visible in mid-September... right when the weekly average went from the 250k-280k of the summer to 190k-210k of mid-September to mid-October (Japan had already done most of its slowdown so it cannot account for more than 10k of that and up till then Europe was at a steady 60-70k so the rest of the slowdown would be mostly stockpiling).

Now, 1.8M/(30.5/7) ~= 413k Wiis produced per week. Let's round it down to 410k and let's see how many they stockpiled between the beginning of august and mid-november (as the Wiis produced after that would go toward 2008's number due the the shipping latency).

I will round every sold number up to lower the stockpile estimate so as to get a likely lower bound on the stockpile.

15th Sep:
410k - 213k = 197k (consoles produced the first week of august should arrive in stores around that week).
22nd Sep:
410k - 212k = 198k
29nd Sep:
410k - 205k = 205k
6th Oct:
410k - 190k = 120k
13th Oct:
410k - 229k = 181k
20th Oct:
410k - 290k = 120k
27th Oct:
410k - 306k = 104k
3rd Nov:
410k - 280k = 130k
10th Nov:
410k - 264k = 146k
17th Nov:
410k - 419k = -9k ---> this indicates the end of the stockpiling, exactly 6 weeks before the end of the year which mean that the stockpile is now finding its way in stores, starting with the week of black Friday.

So the likely minimum total units stockpiled is about 1.39M . Given that I lowered the weekly production estimate by 3k I will round it up to 1.4M to make my life easier.

So counting 6 weeks at 410k plus 1.4 millions in stockpile makes:
6*410k + 1400k = 3.86M getting into stores until the end of the year.

If we add that to last week's total, which was 14.25M IIRC we get:

14.25+3.86 = 18.1 millions

Given that we don't know exactly when they started producing 1.8 millions a months and the possible inaccuracies in Ioi's numbers it might be of by 500k but it gives us a likely lower bound as a lot of the Wiis sold recently in Europe might have been on shelves for a while as it was not sold out for the last few months (i.e. if it was sold out like in America, virtually every Wii sold after mid-september would have been produced since the beginning of August but since it wasn't a number of the Wiis sold in Europe since then were produced before and thus increase the stockpile number by an unquantifiable amount).

To sum up, 18M+ is 90% a sure thing, 19M is likely if the production increase started earlier than August and there was a significant (about 500-600k) number of Wiis stockpiled in Europe when it wasn't sold out and 20 million is possible but quite a stretch, but maybe the Yoga in Wii Fit in Japan is gonna give the Wii that stretch? (if the same slow-market stockpiling I talked about for Europe was there in Japan and in a big enough quantity)

Depends on their stock, I think they'll be ale to sell every system they ship this holiday, but they need about 5 million more to do it

as much as i want it ... 20 million are too much.

if the Wii really sells 20 million till the end of year i'll build
John Lucas a shrine!

by the end of 2008 there wont be 20 mill wiis :P
so i dont think it ill reach 20 mill