By the way, 10 million upfront is insane for even any optimist, even as sales history shows.

AFAIK, in Europe there never was a Wii supply issue... Wii's have been available here in Germany all year (only Amazon always seems to be low on inventory).

I understand why Nintendo are so cautious - look at Japan, all of a sudden weekly sales dropped from 70k to 30k. If that happened to the US market, Nintendo would be in trouble.

Dryden said: Nighteyes_1981 said: All electronics have a failure rate. The Wiis failure rate is extremely low. Something around 3% I believe. Nowhere close to having 'reliability issues'. Compare that to the estimated 33% failure rate of the Xbox 360. I don't know what the PS3 failure rate is, but it appears to be much more reliable than the PS2. The PS2 was extremely prone to failure for a long time. Nintendo has always made quality products that last a long time. According to whom? Where did you get these numbers for failure rates? Even if the Wii's failure rate is only 3%, I would find that disconcerting considering the most widely reported issue is the GPU failure, and not something with a moving part (I could completely understand optical drive failures after hundreds of hours of use).

 3% is the number I remembered reading, which is apparently high according to the article rasone77 linked.  3-5% is basically the eletronics industry standard acceptable failure rate.  When you have sold 10 million units of anything, 30,000 failures isn't actually that much.  So all things considered, the Wii has extremely reliable hardware.

Words Of Wisdom said: choirsoftheeye said: Nintendo has more money than Sony - or, at least, the company is worth more than Sony. That's a fact that many people miss. Tsk tsk. Let's have a reality check! Sony's worth: 12,470,860,000,000 Yen Nintendo's worth: 1,659,239,000,000 Yen Sony's worth is about 7.5 (7.516...) times that of Nintendo.

Woah - wasn't there recently a bit of news that Nintendo was the second biggest company in Japan after Toyota? I wasn't pulling that out of my ass, but perhaps I didn't understand what that particular bit of new meant...

 

Edit: I didn't read the rest of the thread.  Please laugh at the above.  Self-respect -10.

RolStoppable said: I am a nice person.

Uh huh.  No edits on this post.  Nope, none at all...

Smash_Brother said: I have a girlfriend who has done the retail thing for 7 years, and she observed this... When a product is available in every shop on every corner everywhere, demand generally falls, but when the supply is just barely below demand, it keeps the demand coming. Basically, keeping something as the "hot item" has a viral effect: people wanting it stirs other people into wanting it. Like I said, though, if you could get it anywhere, it just wouldn't have the same effect. Now, I'm not accusing Nintendo of anything here, as I'm readily willing to believe that demand is much higher than supply, but it will benefit them greatly if supply continued to be just below demand.

So, what happens when supply meets demand? Will demand decline before sufficient supply or will supply ramp up and sales with it? Or will supply ramp up and sales decline? Lets say we have a store a and store b. They both are out of supply for x. There's 2 customers, y and z, daily asking for it. Y goes to a asking x, a don't have it, y goes to b and ask for x, b doesn't have it. Z goes a asking for x, and when they don't have it, z goes to b to ask x. So the demand is 2 on day on, but both stores have demand of 2, which would equal 4. The next day same happens, only this time there' z,y,g and h. Demand is 4 on day two, and each store has demand of 4. Day 3, six guys, with each store having demand of 6. Day 4, 8. Day 5, 10. Day six, both strores get a supply of 10, and they only sell 12 combined. Day seven both stores sell one x each, just like day 8. And day nine, they get new shipment. So, the demand dropped, when x wasn't supply constrained anymore. Right? Virtually yes, in reality no. The demand actually remained stagnant, only that after supply was enough, people weren't running between stores asking x. @Topic: Wii was originally planned to be manufactured 500k a month. After E3 06, Nintendo started to work to increase production to 1M a month. Production was ramped to 1,3M a month in march and was planned to be increased to 1,8M a month in june, but supplier couldn't manufacture enough certain components, so it was delayed a couple of months. I believe that if Nintendo would have managed to ramp up the production in june, we may have had seen 2M+ production rate in october at latest. We will see Wii production ramped to 2,2-2,3M before the end of this FY. And the supply chain management isn't easy. And since Wii uses a lot of custom hardware, it's even harder than using bulk parts. Although Wii isn't as powerful as 360 or PS3, it doesn't mean that Wii wouldn't use new tech. And besides, what matters the most, is that will it use custom or bulk parts. I can assure you, that PS3:s production is much easier to ramp up than Wiis.

Pk9394 said: Thrillhouse said: Sunday morning 1) Go to Toys r Us an hour before they open 2) Stand in Line (Your job will forgive you) OR get a friend who will stand in line for you ... buy them a pizza & beer) 3) Buy a Wii when the doors open 4) ??? 5) profit thrillhouse from asura server?

Nope

 

Sorry Braugh

RolStoppable said: Words Of Wisdom said: RolStoppable said: I am a nice person. Uh huh. No edits on this post. Nope, none at all... You are quoting me a lot lately, are you a stalker? There's nothing wrong with editing a post when someone realized his/her mistake. This isn't the first time I did that. I only do it for people I respect though.

Me stalking you?  Hah, your posts are stalking me.  They're always right there whenever I hit the quote button just waiting for me to quote them.  It's like you make posts just to be quoted and lure innocent unsuspecting posters into quoting them with promises of joy and joyness.  Well I'm onto you.  I'm onto your fiendish plan for world post quote domination and I won't let it happen.  I'll quote you to the ends of the earth to stop your mad schemes and save these forums as we know them. I will not let innocent by-posters be tricked in your devilishly clever post quote post madness.  By the power of the quote vested in me, I shall quote your post.

Anyway, it's cool that you respect choirsoftheeye and all.  He seems okay.

Words Of Wisdom said: RolStoppable said: Words Of Wisdom said: RolStoppable said: I am a nice person. Uh huh. No edits on this post. Nope, none at all... You are quoting me a lot lately, are you a stalker? There's nothing wrong with editing a post when someone realized his/her mistake. This isn't the first time I did that. I only do it for people I respect though. Me stalking you? Hah, your posts are stalking me. They're always right there whenever I hit the quote button just waiting for me to quote them. It's like you make posts just to be quoted and lure innocent unsuspecting posters into quoting them with promises of joy and joyness. Well I'm onto you. I'm onto your fiendish plan for world post quote domination and I won't let it happen. I'll quote you to the ends of the earth to stop your mad schemes and save these forums as we know them. I will not let innocent by-posters be tricked in your devilishly clever post quote post madness. By the power of the quote vested in me, I shall quote your post. Anyway, it's cool that you respect choirsoftheeye and all. He seems okay.

 Awwww

 

You shouldn't respect me, I just set this all up so you would quote each other.

choirsoftheeye said: Awwww   You shouldn't respect me, I just set this all up so you would quote each other.

 Can I quote you on that?