The average Chinese person only makes $2,500 a year. They won't be buying video games will they? I know Hong Kong makes a lot more, about $30,000, but still.

China may have a population of 1 billion, but most of those people live in rural areas. According to this article: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-02/23/content_523256.htm, the rural population is at about 750 million, leaving only about 250 million people left. That's twice the population of Japan. To make the numbers you're suggesting work, you'd have to assume that the Chinese population will buy Wiis, PS3s, and Xbox 360s in the same proportion as Japan and that each Chinese person has equal(or greater) purchasing power than each Japanese person. This is extremely unlikely, as China's economy isn't as large or robust as Japan's and China's distribution of income is *very* uneven.

A more likely scenario is that China will buy a half or a quarter the number of Wiis that Japan does. Maybe. India's economy is even poorer than China's. The impact on sales numbers from India would probably be too small to be worth considering.

The problem Nintendo will run in to is that piracy is professional in China. It's sold in stores, it's performed in manufacturing plants, warehouses, etc. it's similar to other areas of the world where you literally have to go out of your way to buy legitimate copies of software, with pirated software dominating the shelves.

I had a friend who lived in Kiev and he said that you couldn't buy legitimate software when he was there. Pirated software was all that was available.

This makes China, effectively, an undesirable market unless you make money on your hardware.  Nintendo does, of course, but prices will be different for China than they are in the rest of the world. 

I doubt China will be particularly huge this gen... perhaps 5-10mil Wii if lucky.

however I expect the Wii might make 150 mil without China

@brute

well the GC never officially launched there....

but the 360 did...so did the Ps3

why not wii??

When they can make enough of them

China and India are both getting richer all the time, and have growing middle classes that want to buy luxuries like electronics, but I think you're jumping the gun a bit here. They're becoming increasingly relevant all the time, but I don't expect them to pass individual European countries for many years, let alone become major territories by themselves.

The Wii is definitely blazing through 100M and probably even 150M, but that'll be by getting the attention of the "expanded audience" in the West. However, it could very well be that gaming spreading to the developing world will be the next major leap, easily dwarfing the leaps from SNES to PS, and PS2 to Wii.

I'm not betting any money on it, but if it does happen, then I'm saying I totally called it. =P

China makes virtually no difference, as a gaming market it is a lot smaller than Japan. A heap of people = a heap of sales is just not true, it's more deep than that I'm afraid.

John Lucas the Prophet has said 500 million if they get the supply issues straightened out.

And yes, it should easily break 150 mil IMO.

Who's to say China will even buy the Wii haha. Last I checked Chinese still have animosity towards Japanese companies.

But even if they do, nothing's guaranteed that they'll get into gaming.