Mummelmann said: Perhaps you never wavered, but you are loath to admit it when wrong. You missed by half an inch, why debate when you were so close? It makes you look desperate, and frankly does not become you JL. @Avinash; maybe it was your whining that made ioi change the numbers? @ClaudeLv250: No, not so much, but darn close. And using numbers outside of Vgchartz (Ninty uses sold to retailers, not end user, two different things) to validate claims is just a bit low imo. One shoudl always point out the specifics when making a claim with such bravure instead of nitpicking and arguing over technicalities in the aftermath. It's nothing personal, but everyone should base their numbers on Vgchartz numbers when prediction on Vgchartz. I could very well argue that the Wii was under 20 million by more than 200k if I wanted, simply by using another sites numbers, but I don't and I won't. If a prediction fails; stop trying to redeem or validify it and start a new one, it's simple!

Mummelmann, VGChartz has been re-correcting its numbers. I love VGChartz but even I know they are not absolutely perfect. They do DAMN well to have such smaller pools of info to draw from unlike NPD.

I want them to surpass NPD one day and become the default for tracking sales.

I still dispute the Wii passes XBox 360 in July call. It's in my signature. The fact that Nintendo had shipped 9.27 million at June 30, 2007 HAS to mean that they passed XBox 360 within that month somewhere.

All they had to sell was 730,000 in a month worldwide to hit 10 million and XBox was right around 10 million at that time. In U.S.A. alone they sold 425,000 Wiis in July according to NPD so you know worldwide figures counting the rest of the Americas, Europe & the others, & Japan woulda pushed it well over 730,000. Yes I know Europe would've been the place where there was some lag between shipment and sale but not in most of the world.

Sadly like this prediction it's lost in a foggy area so while I still feel I'm right I said I was gonna cut VGChartz some slack. It still made my Wii beats 360 in the summer overall prediction and according to VGChartz estimates was only slightly delayed.

My stipulation about Wii beating 360 in the Americas in the summer was flat wrong and I said as much. Also in my signature.

About this 20 million. I've seen the Wii's number jump around a lot as ioi straightens out his info.

With this holiday season Wiis were being snapped up worldwide almost instantly even in Europe. So mostly every Wii shipped was sold. The lag between shipped out and bought up was very minor.

I was waiting on Nintendo's report for shipped to get a feel on sold data. If they shipped 20.13 million by 2007 nearly all of those are sold since we're seeing such weak numbers for most of January. Somebody mentioned airshipping to get in on holiday sales. They were pushing out January's Wiis in December to make sure there was some stock.

The infamous supply constrain makes all the difference. If Nintendo had significant stock then I wouldn't even talk about it. But they don't. They are STILL struggling to get Wiis on the market which won't decently change until they start fiscal year 2009 in April.

This year we got giants like Brawl and Wii Fit coming out. Two of the year's biggest games EVER. Not to mention Monster Hunter 3 & Mario Kart Wii among some other surprise titles. They have to make sure the stock is ready to capitalize on this sales potential. The higher the install base the more games they can sell to continue the viral nature of this console. ESPECIALLY for Wii Fit.

Nintendo got caught with their pants down and had been behind the curve on the manufacturing all year because even they didn't see how popular this system would be. They will be bolder this year but for now they are simply in the planning phases to set up the Wii-luge (Wii Deluge).

Funnily it will STILL fall short because Wii Fit is gonna knock the industry out of its orbit. But they will be better prepared than they were in 2007.

They maxed themselves out trying to get every Wii to the stores in December & that's why I feel they crossed the 20 million barrier.

I don't know what an earlier poster meant by saying I need a new calendar or something. My prediction wasn't ever Wii makes 20 million in one year it was Wii makes MINIMUM 20 million by December 31, 2007 at the very last minute, second, and microsecond on the clock.

I referenced Nintendo's statement about that little over a year as an underline. They said they EXCEEDED 20 million by the end of the 2007 calendar year. I just spelled out the calendar year saying 13 Gregorian months and 12 days. If you count November 19th to the 19th of every month you have a Gregorian month. 31 – 19 = 12 so that's where the 12 days came from. In reality Wii did all this in roughly 13 1/2 months since November 2006 was about half a month for them.

Hopefully my 60 million in 2008 prediction won't exist in a similar foggy cloud. I expect that one to be crystal clear. Nintendo ain't playing around this year. Numbers are about to go insane!

John Lucas

Welcome back JL. I was waiting to see your comments on this.

You should update your sign to remove the passing 360 last summer and add the 60m by end of '08.

JL, when do you expect the wii deluge to begin?

It appears that tkam was banned after all. lol.

Nintendo will show a vastly upped production projection starting with the first of their 2009 fiscal year April 1, 2008. We will see in their Q4/FY08 report later that month.

Wiis will slowly become more and more plentiful starting in the spring and throughout the summer.

By fall the combined effect of the 2006/2007 games like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy and such with the monster Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Star Wars Force Unleashed (if good), Monster Hunter 3, and most especially Wii Fit will have Wiis just rolling out of stores.

I don't know if you've noticed. I don't know where you live, bigjon, but in the U.S. I've been keeping track of shelf space allotments in the stores. The dominant system gets the most shelfspace to sell games which encourages greater sales. Gamecube being the weakling last gen only had 1 block in my local Wal-Mart, PS2 had 2 or 3 maybe 4.

With all the new systems on the market it's crowded now. PS3 has 1 block. PS2 has been crunched down to 2 blocks. PSP has 1 block. XBox 360 has 2 blocks. Originally Wii had Gamecube's 1 block while DS split with GBA with their 2 blocks.

NOW Wii has 2 blocks and is merging into 3 as DS expands its 2 while GBA disappears slowly. DS & Wii are being crossed over into each other's blocks awkwardly because there are so many systems on the market. They will eventually work this out where DS & Wii get 3 a piece somehow. They'll take the smallest weakest selling system and crowd it in with another system for space saving's sake.

When Nintendo starts the deluge which I believe begins in the spring starting with just building stream, stores will rearrange their setups to accomodate. Money's in the bank. The fact that PS2 is still strong makes it complicated to work with while also having a strong selling 360. PSP will probably be crunched in with PS3 or PS2 since PSP doesn't sell enough games. Actually I think I have already seen that in my store.

It starts slowly but gradually in the spring but builds more and more throughout the year until holidays REALLY kick it into gear.

60 million will come as a result of actually seeing more available stock in stores. It still will instantly sell out but will be replenished more frequently than before. Most people get discouraged after not being able to find the system for a while and stop looking. When they see it with less effort in search sales will explode.

John Lucas

"60 million will come as a result of actually seeing more available stock in stores. It still will instantly sell out but will be replenished more frequently than before. Most people get discouraged after not being able to find the system for a while and stop looking. When they see it with less effort in search sales will explode."

Right. What a lot of nay-sayers tend to forget, or not realize, is that because the Wii is so supply constrained the only people who own one are those dedicated enough to gaming (or dedicated to gamer kids) to hunt one down and a few lucky souls who were in the right place at the right time. There's now a mountain of people who are interested in getting a Wii, but aren't about to kill themselves to find one. When Wii's start having a shelf life, these people will (slowly at first) rediscover them and pick them up (when it's financially convinient to them).

The effect is people will first be claiming the bubble is bursting because low and behold, Wiis can be found on store shelves. But then those casual, new-gamers, non-gamers, whatever you wanna call them will start buying it up in increasing number and sales will go up, up, up until they become spare again.

I'm not even going to get into the WiiFit effect here, but JL is right, you havn't seen anything yet.