The numbers for Decemeber 30th were 19,067,599.

Even if Ioi adds back the 300,000 it won't be 20 mil.

Within the margin of error... maybe?

but on the wrong side of the margin.

I say he was right, even if you split hairs he was very freakin close. At the time he made the prediction it was very bold and it he was right.
His wii-fit prediction, I felt was a bit tongue in cheek. But the over all message from this prediction holds true. Wii-fit is selling crazy good, every week it has sold more than its launch week.
Im a big fan of John Lucas. He makes bold predictions and presents them with style and flair. (and decent reasons for them) opposed to one eyed raving fanboys who just make stupid predictions.

 Good point, it did seem extremely insane at the time, but it was close. But he's not really very good at predictions in general, as most people realize I'm sure.

Nintendo shipped 20.05 million units as of dec 31st 2007.
Nintendo themselves say that it takes 3 weeks to get from them to retail floor in US and EU.
Given a monthly production of 1.8 million units this means that at any one time there are roughly 1.35 million Wiis in transit around the world.
This gives us at least 18.7 million units on retail floor as of dec 31st. It takes less time to ship to Japan so the number will be a bit higher.

VGChartz has the number of Wii sold at 19.07 million. Seems pretty accurate to me.

It's actually 20.13 million.

And he's still going to be a bit short.

His real prediction was 24 million anyway, he copped out and said "at minimum 20 million" after that.

Wii has finally officially sold more to retail than the 360 now.

johnlucas's prediction was short, since 20 mil was the lower boundary.

But I do give him credit for making such a prediction so early in the game.

Hindsight and Foresight I guess.

Give JL his due. Yes, he was a little short - not because he over-estimated how popular the Wii would be, be fact, he may have under-estimated that. But he over-estimated Nintendo's construction capacity.

Considering none of us know the complexities of putting together a VG system (especially when you're not Sony) JL was damn close. DAMN close, with a prediction (almost) all of you thought was not only way off, but totally insane.

To be fair, some of his predictions have also been way off, but he was one of the first and only to predict Wii's immense success right from the get-go. And those predictions that were wrong are only wrong by date, not by fact (Wii will surpass 360 in NA, Wii Fit will outsell Halo 3).

No, JL is not a visionary prophet, and while I don't like to tout my own horn my predictions have been more accurate than his, but it's JL that puts them out there for all to see and criticize and then backs them up. So while he's most likely wrong about 20m sold to customers by Dec 31, 2007 he's wrong by such a small amount that many of you would have even considered it impossible, even as late as November.

"Give JL his due. Yes, he was a little short - not because he over-estimated how popular the Wii would be, be fact, he may have under-estimated that. But he over-estimated Nintendo's construction capacity.

Considering none of us know the complexities of putting together a VG system (especially when you're not Sony) JL was damn close. DAMN close, with a prediction (almost) all of you thought was not only way off, but totally insane."

Not really, almost all of the experienced users here (correctly) predicted that about 20 million would be the upper limit of what Nintendo produced, whatever the demand.

fix'd.

sorry but wii is sold out in Japan, if it were not then they would allocate the consoles elsewhere... where they will sell instantly... Eastern Euro countries? yea that will add up to a total of like 40k MAX...