Assuming Nintendo gets some economies of scale going on, they should be able to cut prices whenever sales start to slack off. Before they resort to that, they can also get a little nudge from releasing the Wii in new colors.

I'm guessing sales may start to take a small dip this spring and Nintendo will have either a price cut or new Wii colors this summer.

I reckon we will see the World Wide sales at a rate a bit higher than last years. Japans seem to have boosted greatly by wii fit, and the way both wii sports and play shift like mad over their Wii fits addition should continue to help move a sustainable lot of hardware. As for SSBB and Mario Kart Wii, both will help hardware sales rise, but phaps not long term. If the wii continues to sell out in America and EU however it will be difficult to judge ssbb and MKs effect on the demand for hardware.

well, just by bringing my wii with me during the holidays i created 3 new customers. historically, sales of the dominant console only increase in their second year. that may not be applicable to the wii (time will tell) but i doubt there will be any slowdown in demand this year. besides, the minute sales start to lag there will be a price cut and sales will pick up again.

and don't forget - it is customary to stockpile consoles for holiday sales during the year. last year they couldn't stockpile enough so even if sales lag behind 450k a week it's not really a bad thing just as long as it isn't down to like 100k.

I think nintendo need to further boost production. At the moment, they're losing customers due to a lack of supply.

Even if, as they boosted production, demand slowed, they're best placed to cut hardware prices, and bring demand back up again, so it definatly seems to be a risk worth taking.

Prouction increase to 5 million per month in August.
BELIEVE!

I think weekly sales may level around 350k at least till March, If Nintendo sees the need to up production then [probably to around 2.2-2.5 million] then they will,... not sure how long it takes for production to increase, but if it is only a short time then weekly sales will rise in April/May... if it takes a long time (4-5 months?) then weekly sales may go down a bit while Nintendo holds back stock.

I think 40 million LTD before next January is a given, I'm gonna predict 46 million when the league gets put back up.

They aren't going to begin stockpiling in January, though.  Nintendo will ship everything they can make and try to get an idea for demand.  If it's still sold out everywhere, it's time to boost production again.

Well, the Wii will need to sell around 400k a week to sell out worldwide. We'll see how that goes.

I think it's rather boring to guesstimate Wii sales because it's always sold out.
It should be fun guessing once it's no longer supply constrained.

Nintendo has planned a Chinese/South Korean Wii launch for the fall of 2008, right? EDIT - actually I just did a google search and it's planned for "late 2008", not necessarily the Fall I guess. However, the points below still stand I think.

They have to get enough consoles ready for that, either through stockpiling or a production increase. I agree with Entroper that stockpiling should start as late as possible, and I don't see a way for 1.8 million per month to be enough for Japan+America+PAL+China launch+South Korea launch.

The most logical conclusion is that they'll have to increase production again pretty soon (in 3 or 4 months at most), if they haven't increased it already. Sales in the next few weeks will tell us whether they're still producing 1.8 million per month only.

This week it's going to sell about 550k+ once Japan numbers are ready... expect the Wii to stay sold out the whole year, thanks to all the huge games coming up.