And what do you think people do with their old models? Lock it in the basement?

We couldn't assume anething at this moment.May be sales are low because there are no big hit on the market by now. May be people are playing MW2 and Halo 3 or Gears of War 1/2. May be they are buying used.

Ok, thanks.  I do also think that you tend to only see a sales spike in new releases when they just have been released.  As of now, they haven't been. 

In regards to people buying new 360 systems, if they have one, they will either trade in or give the system to someone else.  I gave my older 360 to my brother, for example.

I have been saying (see my last post above) that older models end up in the hands of other people, so it isn't that big of a deal.  Maybe someone does keep a back up 360, but I doubt it.

No they are not doing it on their own. They did it back then, now the numbers arent as high, therefore they arent doing it. I said Nintendo cant obtain the same results as before, how am i joking?

My guess is Nintendo will have a small price cut for Wii in Sept / Oct 2010. Probably $20-$30 / 20-30 Euros / 2000 -3000 Yen. If you look at the lineup for the Christmas / Holiday Season in 2010, Nintendo seems hellbent on making a killing with Wii software - its own and royalties - in the West. Not sure about Japan yet though.

Wii Party / DKC (at least based on the SNES games) / Kirby / Wii Relax (if it exists) are all potential million sellers in Japan. Each Donkey Kong Country provided a bump for SNES in Japan - even the third one. DKC Returns and Kirby should both be sizable bumps in Japan, and can be much bigger with a price cut for nostalgic SNES gamers. There will probably be a handfull of decent sized third party games that show up at the last minute as well.

Holiday Japan in 2009 was essentially this:

                    Core                           Bridge                     Casual

         Samurai Warriors 3           NSMB Wii                Wii Sports Resort

          Pokepark                             Momotarou             Wii Fit Plus

          Tales of Graces               Mario Kart Wii           Taiko no Tatsujin

           Price Cut ---------------------------------------------------------------->

For Holiday 2010 in Japan we know we have this roughly:

            Core                              Bridge                        Casual                                                   

           DKC Returns              Kirby: Epic Yarn          Wii Party

                                                 NSMB Wii                    Wii Fit Plus

                                                                                       Wii Sports Resort

Given the Wii attach rate is only about four, to tap all three types of player Nintendo really just needs a couple more big Core titles to be ok in Japan...the selection for Bridge gamers (who play core, bridge, and casual games) and Casual gamers (who play mostly casual and some bridge games) is already fairly solid.

In the West its more like this for 2009 / 2010 over Christmas.

2009           Core                         Bridge                    Casual

            Modern Warfare        NSMB Wii               Wii Fit Plus

            Lego Starwars             Mario & Sonic       Wii Sports Resort

            Lego Indy Jones           DJ Hero                  Just Dance

                                                   MK Wii                    EA Sports Active

                                                   Beattles: RB           Monopoly

                                                   Band Hero              Your Shape

               Price Cut ------------------------------------------------------->

2010          Core                        Bridge                        Casual

               Mario Galaxy 2         DKC Returns           Wii Party

               Sonic Colors                NSMB Wii               Wii Fit Plus

               Goldeneye                  DJ Hero 2                Just Dance 2

               Kirby                            NBA Jam                  NFL Training Camp

               Metroid                     Mario Kart Wii         Wii Sports Resort

               Epic Mickey              Michael Jackson       Carnival Games 2

               COD: Black Ops        The Sims 3                 Def Jam Rapstar

I think I'm on pretty safe ground in saying that the "Core" game lineup for the west is much stronger in Christmas 2010 than Christmas 2009, in terms of what will sell fairly well. The Bridge games look stronger too - The Sims / NBA Jam are both big in addition to DKC Returns. On the 'casual' side, Def Jam / NFL Training Camp seem like they could break out and Just Dance 2 / Carnival Games 2 should be popular with women / children respectively. Wii seems to have most of the major western genres covered with at least two games in 2010. Party, shooting, sports, platformers, dancing, and music are all covered with at least two fairly major titles.  In 2009, you had really Fitness, NSMB, and sports as the only well-represented genres. Platformers, dancing, sports, and shooters should all see improvement over holiday 2009 on Wii in the west. In Others and the Americas, the Wii attach rate is about 8 games per user - and so as long as those users aren't looking for eight new games in one genre / category alone, there is more than enough product to induce alot of shopping for Wii software. Ubisoft (Michael Jackson, Just Dance 2), EA (NBA Jam, The Sims 3, NFL training camp), Sega (Sonic Colors), Disney (Epic Mickey) and Activision (Goldeneye, Call of Duty) should all have decent holidays on Wii in the west as compared to Christmas 2009 when not much really broke out (Just Dance is really a 2010 thing). So long as content continues to sell in major volume, the big publishers and Nintendo will continue to invest in Wii - at least in the West for another year or two.

So overall for Wii you can split 2009 vs. 2010 into this as far as I'm concerned roughly speaking:

HW

10' vs 09'   Japan              Americas             Others

Q1               Up                   Down                    Flat

Q2               Up                   Up                         Down

Q3               Up                   Up                         Down

Q4              Down              Down                   Down

SW             Japan             Americas            Others

Q1              Up                   Down                   Down

Q2              Up                   Down                   Down

Q3              Down             Down                   Down

Q4               Flat                  Up                          Up                         

In quarters with new skus / huge games / price cuts or whatever else, Wii will occassionally look bad in 2010 against PS3 / X360. But overall its really a fairly flat year, with HW likely down 10% and SW looking pretty flat. The growth in X360 / PS3 doesn't really seem to be hurting Wii, it is more that Wii already is owned by most 'active' gamers who want it, and so now it is penetrating less active users (who buy 1-3 games per year en-masse rather than 3-5 en masse as is still the case with X360 / PS3).

The biggest competitive advantage Wii has over PS3 and X360 is that even though the game libraries are very similar for PS3 & X360, Sony and Microsoft need different amounts of SW to justify maintaining their half of the HD market. When PS3 / X360 purchasing rates per user drop into the 2s, each company is fairly likely to bring on the next box - because unlike Wii, once purchasing rates get into the 1-2 games per year range I can't see either Microsoft or Sony being able to afford the declines. 1.4 games * 60m PS3 and 1.3 games * 62m X360s is a far worse outcome late in the generation than 1 game * 105m Wiis - given development costs and how large Nintendo's share of SW is on Wii vs. the Sony / Microsoft share of SW on PS3 / X360.                

Quite crazy! So the stains on Ballmer's clothes aren't sweat as usual!!!  :-O  :-S 

Well, that's quite right.  Some are assuming the lack of SW spike means the bulk of the HW is people re-buying, but this doesn't necessarily follow.

Now, some of the spike is definately people re-buying, that we can be sure of.  Heck, people on this forum have re-bought so we know it happens!  The question is what percentage of the spike is re-buying?  That's the unknown.

New owners might be turning to used games, I probably would if I was buying into a 360 this late in the gen.  Or they might have used all their money on the 360s and won't buy many games for a few weeks.

There are lot's of possibilities.

All we know is roughly how big the spike was and that some of it is new owners and some of it is existing owners re-buying.

How SW looks over a longer period of time might shed some light eventually, for example the next more major new title should see a better opening if there are lots of new owners.

We'll never know for sure, basically.

But of course some (on both sides) always try and spin some potential insight into facts.

Wii doomsayers just think about when Wiiners will want teh powah of teh C3ll on their Wiis and they'll have to duck-tape another four Wiis to each of their ones: Wii (re)purchases will skyrocket! There will be worldwide duck-tape shortages! Only teh strenght of duck-tape will be able to prevent teh interwebz from disintegrating, but all teh duck-tape will all be used up by teh Wiis, so there's no hope, teh intewebz are d0med!!!   

Drugs are bad!

lol, well, crush your enemies, see them driven before you.....

I think MS is getting cheated out of some of that.