Year 1 sales of PS2 (from vgchartz' data):
7,144,877

Year 2 sales of PS2:
16,979,964 (237.6% of year 1)

Year 3:
20,890,044 (292.4% of year 1)

Year 4:
19,002,686 (266.0% of year 1)

Granted, this data is misleading because IIRC year 1 of PS2 was japan only? If I had more time I would go through and try to account for different console releast dates. However, the point remains that console sales go *up* after the first year, not stay level. However, Wii doubling in sales for the next few years is not at all unlikely; considering it is more constrained by supply than demand at this point, and console sales trend upwards after the first year, not downwards. I think double year 1's sales is going to end up being pretty conservative, and that would put it at just under 100M by the end of year 3 (not the end of 2010).

So, while my rough estimation would mean Avinash would miss his prediction, keep in mind the following:
1) I am probably underestimating Wii's sales.
2) There *will* be more production than I am accounting for, and Nintendo is being proactive in finding new markets. Once the supply/demand curve stabilizes, like it seemed *almost* to the point of pre galaxy/holiday (i know, it was available in places. But places != everywhere. I am talking true stabilization, where if you want one you can get one without too much work, any day of the week). Anyways, once the stabilization occurs we will have more of an idea how it will sell... until, of course, colors/price drop/etc.

I think there are more causes for increased sales of Wii than you want to account for.

Personally, I would be *very* surprised if Avinash's prediction comes true. However, considering I fully expect it to be at 110M by when his prediction ends.... I won't begrudge him being right. His prediction is well within the reasonable side of unlikely.

which they most likely will

Oh, I won't listen to JL, I just wanted to bring some sense into this thread, but it seems like I've come too late.

 @ Danny 355

That's generally the way to go with him, just let him spout his nonsense.

@ alpha DK

Nice numbers and all, but, if some of the people in this thread are to be believed, production/supply is too low to satite demand, so how could it double if they're only producing as much as 1.8 mil/month?

@DMeisterJ
that increase didnt happen to long ago,if wii was selling 1.8 mil a month its sales would of been higher by now.
nintendo didnt know there would be this much demand,next year they wont make the same mistake

There are two main factors at play here:

1/ How aggressive do Ninty want to be? Are they HAPPY to sell "just" 20m (12 * 1.8m approx) Wiis per year, for the next 3-5-10 years? They may well be - this gives them time to develop and sell software after all.

2/ "Hard" manufacturing limits: its difficult to explain to people (in a short period of time), but it gets to a point where its IMPOSSIBLE to manufacture Wiis faster. Not harder, not more expensive - but IMPOSSIBLE.

The core chips that come from IBM (CPU/GPU) have "hard" manufacturing limits. That is, the machines that make them - simply cannot make them any faster than they are currently being made.

For Ninty to *significantly* increase manufacturing levels would require a MASSIVE investment, and several years (if not longer) - i.e. potentially build their own factories. I doubt this is something they would ever do - rather just hunt down for more manufacturing partners, and slowly increase the output from all their factories.

I'm guessing they manage to upp their output a little next year (maybe up to around 2m/year, maybe a little more) - but not much more than this.

This results in around 23m-25m for the fiscal year ('08-'09), and assuming they are around 23m-25m sold by March '08 (their forecast) - results in around 50m total sold by March '09, or 45-47m sold by end of Xmas '08.

...

Ninty would have to pull a REAL rabbit out of the bag to increase production to around 3m/m, needed to get to the 60m level. And I don't see it happening - for now anyway.

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/11/wii_shortage 

George Harrison (not the beattle) said in a recent interview that they intended to keep production at 1.8 million units a month until demand subsided. So at this moment in time they have no plans to increase Wii production.

@shams

The wii wont be sold out forever, sales will drop eventually. Dont think that if they make 20M per year they will sell all 20M that year.

i think they will always sell close to 20 million a year,somtimes even pass it just like ps2 and DS

@shams - Nice to see some sense in the thread.

@alpha_dk - My problem with your numbers is you're taking something thats happened in the past and just applying that theory to something that has never happened before.

3 years from now I see the Wii at around 85 million and the PS2 at around 125 million.

5 years from now is when things will get interesting and the Wii may pass the PS2 at the 130 million mark.

 See this is only true if it is IBM/Ati that are the limiting factors, but I don't buy that, as we would have heard some rumblings on that matter by now, not to mention the fact that Nintendo has been looking for new manufacutring partners for some time now indicates that the bottleneck is with them.  I think instead it was one thing, people say that Nintendo could not have anticipated the Wii'ssuccess, I think they are only half right, Nintendo anticipated the Wii's success, just not how fast it would happen, with the DS there was a year where it had only lukewarm support and then the explosion around the time Nintendogs and AC and Kart came out, With Wii the adoption was at a fever pitch from day one, I think Nintendo thought it would have a year or so where it could get further production up and running before the demand took off, so they were caught off guard on that. But looking at Iwata's quotes, even a year before launch it was clear they knew it would be huge, only the timeframe was unexepected, we already know from reports that Nintendo has been looking for new manufacturing partners for some time, a process no doubt started a while back, it is clear to me that Nintendo will be upping production in the near future. They just haven't revelaed details yet, because, well, its Nintendo