his original was 20mil; he later said 20-24, but his original was just plain 20mil

and shipped was 140k over 20mil...nobody knows how much sold was, as those are just estimates...we do know that vgchartz undertracked americas by 300k and do u really wanna argue that there were 300k wiis in stores in Americas?

What does Nintendo consider "shipped to retailer"? It leaving their warehouse or it being delivered?

Having worked in shipping/receiving in the past, I don't see how they would track deliveries like that. It's highly likely that once it leaves their door, they consider it sold. 

 Doesn't matter since they were airshipping to NA, at the time

i'm sure they do leaving their warehouse, but they air-shipped in the wiis in december instead of boat-shipping them

the fact that it can be debated over a few hundred k means he was basically right, since nobody can prove exact amount sold

I don't see how it makes delivery irrelevent because they were air-shipping consoles. It still takes ~2 days to get from China to the east coast of the USA and then you have to factor in distribution houses and actual delivery of the console from that point forward.

It's not quite as cut and dry as some of you make it out to be. With the number of Wiis Nintendo was shipping during those final weeks, it's likely that there were possibly 100k+ stuck in various points of the distribution channel.

Considering how long ago JL made these predictions, arguing whether Wii hit 19.8 million or 20 million is pretty ridiculous. Good job to JL

I agree. JohnLucas got me. I thought 22 million but he was firm on 20 million and pretty much nailed it.

Yeah guys let's not get too carried away. JL was close which should please him enough considering everybody calling him crazy for his predictions but he has yet to be proven right.

For a long time now whenever PS3 or 360 fans came on here claiming their console was undertracked by checking a financial report we'd quickly point out shipped or sold to retailer =/= sold to customers.

I understand the Wii sells out amazingly quickly but with actual time delay to sort deliveries through retailer's distribution chains (regardless of how quick Nintendo can airship them to the US) and the few markets in Others or Japan where it isn't a complete sellout are enough to realize where the discrepancy lies.

VGCharts has 12/30/07 LTD WW sales at around 19.07 million. That means there is a discrepancy of a million Wiis. A few hundred thousand were in transit all around the world as in Nintendo manufactured them up till Dec. 31 (i'd say anything manufactured 12/25 or later couldn't have sold before the end of the year and possibly even earlier) and shipped them then and the rest were either being rerouted through retailers' individual distribution chains or sitting on some random shelf.

It's possible that only 100,000 were caught up in traffic and JL was right but it's far more likely he was still wrong.  Close enough though JL so congrats on that. 

That's right. The links are all in my signature.

Since VGChartz doesn't have the ability to highlight individual posts you will find my first mention of the 20 million and that Wii passes XBox 360 in the summer and July at this link here on 1st page.

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=672

It was my very first post here back on March 14, 2007 after a long time lurking. I remember when the place was still called VGCharts.org for goodness sake!

I couldn't believe how little faith people had in the Wii to sustain its sales power and it galvanized me to speak up which I've been doing ever since.

I added the 24 million max range later on as just an extra stipulation but the prediction was always MINIMUM, AT LEAST 20 million Wiis sold worldwide by the end of calendar year 2007.

I got a new amendment to my signature and this link is part of it.

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=15452&start=-0

Thank you everybody for your support. More "crazy" predictions on their way. It's gonna be a wild 2008!

So, is MGS4 still going to be a 360 exclusive?

Until that one turns out to be true, I'm going to consider JL nothing more than a lucky SOB.