Nintendo accelerated their reporting procedure. Sony's are due in about a month. Im pretty sure they won't read well (for the gaming division anyway).

MS's are due out soon - today I think?

Three weeks of april ...some 200k in Japan and some 195K in NA ...plus Europe ...well yes its not 550K off ....

 Still I would bet Nintendo numbers are mostly shipped units .Its sold out nearly in Japan and NA ,but not so in Europe (excepting UK apparently ) .

For those interested, here are some tidbits from the financial report... (jeez I love reading this stuff :>).

 - R&D expenses for next 12 months will increase by approx 20% (to almost 400mUS?)

 - Marketing expenses for next 12 months will increase by approx 10% to (?? this can't be right - I keep getting 780m US, which has to be wrong... :? Or maybe not??).

 - Last year Nintendo made approx 210mUS of exchange currency gains. This year they have already factored in a LOSS of 200m US losses.

 - Nintendo took approx 20mUS sales of playing cards/Karuta(?)

 - Total employees will grow to approx 3,300

 - Nintendo are opening up a new Korean subsidary (to have 21 subsidiaries & 8 affiliates) 

(all exchanges done at 115yen to 1US)

Of course VGChartz is going to be off in places they can only extrapolate and guess at numbers.

 They guessed at the 360 numbers in others, and were off by 200k, so they re-adjusted. The same has happened for the Wii, but were off a bit more.

This shows that Nintendo has sold approx. 2.5m Wiis in 3 months, or about 800k per month.

Johnlucas is going to eat some major crow come July :)

Good thing I went out on a rope and stated that the Wii won't overtake the 360 this year (atleast fully).

 good thing then i predicted it will :), that'll bring me atleast high on the prediction list aye? ^^

*Yawn*

I'm writing up a quick piece for Popzart as we speak.  Check Wii's news channel it's right on there under Technology section. UP 77%. Hell yeah!

We'll see who's laughing last in July. Remember my prediction doesn't become garbage until August 1. I always said WITHIN July. Check my history.

360's a sitting duck in the water just waiting to be passed.

John Lucas 

The R&D costs seem reasonable because they will continue to attempt to reduce the manufacturing costs of the Wii and Nintendo DS,  work on the DS' successor (due out in 2009 as a guestimate) and work on the Wii's successor (due out in 2011 as a guestimate)

The total marketing costs are also pretty typical (IIRC there was $500,000,000 spent in 2002 for the GBA and Gamecube) being that they have to release dozens of games worldwide while still actively marketing two major consoles.

The one I find interesting is the Korean Subsidary. I read a few years ago that Nintendo has typically been handled by an insane company (with ties to organized crime) in South Korea; this meant that Nintendo products were rarely sold in reputable stores and the typical place to find a Gameboy or Gamecube was in a flea maket. Meanwhile, there always apeared to be a demand for these products as retailers would report that they would deal with dozens of people every week who were looking for these products that were not really available. This should be interesting to see how a well handled console sells in the land of PC gaming.

Its still possible - but it will be tough. The moving of those big 360 releases to September will help.

Nintendo will make about 1.2m / month - but that's on average. Extra 2m for Xmas, and its 1m/month. 3 months = 3m - which leaves the Wii about 250k behind the 360 (assuming the 360 sells NO units which won't happen). At 200k/month in the US, that's another 600k - probably closer to 1m (worldwide) - in the next month. Leaving the Wii about 1m behind start of August.

We'll see of course... your prediction is still possible (just unlikely ;).

I read a while back that they did this to get into local development. Its all part of their push into online gaming, with Korea being such a large market. I think they are hoping to get some Korean developers making online Wii titles (Ragnorok anyone?).

14 million Wii's eh? Not bad at all.

My only question is, since this is about March, didn't Nintendo discuss revving up their production lines in the beginning of April?

So does this increase in production enter into the 14 million prediction, or are we talking about adding to that goal?