That may be true only if the numbers on the page are totally accurate...the Wii can be overtracked (in november it was )easily.In Europe and Japan there was stock ,and is,stock on the shops...so numbers could be higher than production ones but so much remains to be seen.In march we will have a clearer picture.

accounting for a missing 400k is easy. The Wiis you see in shops weren't built the day before. A Wii that you see in a shop on your average October Sunday morning at 7 am was probably built in September or even August in China, then put on a ship and sailed to America. As well as this, there's time that the Wiis have to stay in place, get sent around in trucks, etc. There's generally a slow paced march from China to America which we'll say for the sake of argument (and easy maths) takes one month. That means Nintendo's entire October shipment (minus stockpiles) was actually built in September. And the December shipment was actually built in November.

Now it comes to Christmas and Nintendo needs to ship as many bloody Wiis to America as possible to give little Timmy a Christmas present. They triple their distribution workforce, and perhaps start sending them in via plane rather than boat. Let's say they cut their distribution time down to a single week. This means in December, not only do they get their usual 1.8 million per month from November production, but they also get 3/4 of Decembers production (1.35 million) on top of that. On top of whatever they have stockpiled, which I imagine they would keep in China, and then ship in November.

But these numbers have to come from somewhere. For the entire of December Nintendo has an incredibly fast (and more expensive) shipping procedure. This means that Decembers production gets sold 3/4 in January and 1/4 in February. Meanwhile, January's production is sold in February, as Nintendo returns to normal shipping. Poor lonely January only has 450k Wiis to sell worldwide, no wonder Nintendo didn't make too many of those rainchecks!

Note that this is what happened to the DS last Christmas, remember how DS sales were so low in January 07? That's because they sold them in December.

 "In march we will have a clearer picture."

 What happens in March?

u neglected to consider the fact that RETAILERS were stockpiling

The .48 could have come from anywhere. I say retailers and stuff in stores in EU/Japan.

Thanks for a clear look at it. I think that is does show some amassing of stock by Nintendo/Distributors/ Retailers. However it really amouts to units delayed 2 months or so. I really don't think that is what people were arguing about last year. I know you were not trying to get into symantics but many people were flaming mad at Nintendo last March, and were clearly wrong as your data shows they were not able to start holding any stock until September at the earliest.

The real question is if 1.8 million per month this year will allow for stockpiling throughout the year to satisfy the next holiday as well as the spikes for major software.

I understand what you are trying to say but the margins here aren't big enough to make a difference even if they swing wildly low.

@fastrabbit,

I agree completely, stores stockpiling just makes sense. Here is a quote of mine from 4 months ago:

"It makes a lot of sense for the stores themselves to stockpile. Any reason you can get over the competition for customers to be in your store shopping for gifts is very very good. To these stores a Wii sold now is not nearly as valuable as a Wii sold in Nov/Dec. "

Now, aside from the fact that I have considered it, it doesn't change the fact that there was stockpiling. I'm not really concerned with who did the stockpiling, just that there was stockpiling.

PS - Great responces so far, this thread turned out pretty good considering some of the past stockpiling threads and where they went....

yeah, there was stockpiling, and i'm sure it wasn't ALL on the retailers side

i guess i was just saying that I don't buy into the complaint people said all last year that Nintendo was stockpiling hordes of Wiis for the Holidays; they may have stockpiled a few, mostly in fall, but it was mostly retailers that held their limited shipments for big Sunday ads instead of releasing them as soon as they received them from Nintendo

I agree.... and actually consider this:

Logically speaking the data I have shown shows that Wiis were produced during summer and fall months and didn't make it to consumers until December.  This doesn't actually imply where these units were held up, by who, and for how long, etc...  So in reality this data only allows a generic "there was stockpiling at some point" conclusion and saying who it was stockpiled by is actually not possible without further data. 

Leo-J isn't here yet, he seemed to think no more than 1.8 million would get sold in December.