I can't here the myth of Nintendo stockpiling that much anymore. Really I don't. Neither for Christmass, nor for "Brawl". This week the Wii is down, last week it was up, I bet my ass of its up next week again. Why? Because of shipments. It seems that at the moment, Nintendo has not a stream lined shipment, they just jump from week to week. This is mostly a copy and past from what I posted in another forum, explaining why it is a myth, and what to expect the Wii will sell in Feb and March in the US.  

So lets gets started:

The christmas stockpiling myth: They just don't did it last year, at least not to that extend people believe it. Lets go by the numbers. We now they produce more than 1.8 Million/month since september (so says Nintendo). More than means, they produce 1.8 Million for sure and they can plan, if they produce more, its because they don't have less reject due to defect than expected. Nintendo is alway lowbaling its numbers. So I think 2 Million is the right number. Lets take 1.9 Million. Since they do that since August/September we don't have to take shipment times (for know) into account. So they produce 5.7 Million/quarter.

Nintendo shipped about 6.9 Million Units in that quarter. So we have 1.2 Million Units to explain, don't we? I have an explanation for that, an easy one: They flew them in. Normally it takes the Wii 20-25 days from production to shelf (According to Reggi), at least in the US. Flying them saves around 17 days. What does that mean in production? Well half of a month, or 0.95 Million. Know we have only 250 thousand missing. If we had gone by 2 Million production a month, we would end up with nothing missing, 100k produced more.

So know, the forecast for this quarter. Nintendo is forecasting 4.2 Million Wii's shipped. We can safely assume thats the a guaranteed number, not a realistic number (It would be embarrassing to raise the forecast and then not reaching it). So it is save to assume 4.5 Million+ this quarter shipped. (Do you see thats lower than production? Thats why my "fly them in" calculation can't be that far off!). No we need to know how much will get each territory. In the first 9 month of the fiscal, NA was getting 45% off the supply. So lets assume its 33% this time. That means 1.5 Million+.
In January NA got most likely around 300k. So we have 1.2 Million Wii still missing. Where will they end up, if not sold or on the shelf (because supply>demand) or sold? Since all evidence I have lead to the conclusion that the Wii is sold out in NA, period, I go by what is shipped is sold.

Again 1.2 Million Wii's will be shipped to NA (US+CA) in Feb and March. And thats a "at least", 1.4 Million seems more realistic.

The shipment is just not streamlined at the  moment, thats all. It will jump up and down for a while, so it seems.

Everything explained. No stockpiling what so ever. Am I right? Well we will see next week. If the Wii pulls 150k or more, I am right. That week just a "bigger" shipment arrived. Thats all :) 

OK, let me kill this thread quickly. From the horse's mouth:

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/080125qa/index.html

Q: You said that you would be able to make 1.8 million "Wii" hardware systems per month, but you did ship 7 million during the 3rd quarter (October-December 2007). Did you ship the difference of 1.5 to 1.6 million by air?

A: We manufactured and retained some amount of hardware for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, and we also air shipped some units that were originally slated for delivery in January.

 Did I say no stockpling for Christmas last year? I said not to the extend people believed. So you proved me right :)

Heres the quote:

"The christmas stockpiling myth: They just don't did it last year, at least not to that extend people believe it."

And they said some on both, not saying how much of each. How do you explain the low sales in Jan?  Maybe they had 200k stockpiled and the rest was flew in? Hell people are talking about the 1.7 Million to explain and said they where stockpiled. And I and other where called "crazy" because we said they where mostly from Jan. 

Somewhat related to this, is there a way to get old weekly sales data in a table format? Not a total, but the individual weeks.

wha? sorry, i dont get it. if its a myth, then it shouldnt really exist, but you stated that

"The christmas stockpiling myth: They just don't did it last year, at least not to that extend people believe it."

so they did stockpile so, its not a myth but reality.

I already did a thread on this....only the other way around. Stockpiling does happen, there is some pretty undeniable proof of it in the numbers and as NJ5 pointed out from the horses mouth itself. They stockpiled for X-mas and in quantities greater than 1m units which is definitely significant and I think on the level with "the extent that people believe", if not beyond it.

The problem with your X-mas analysis is that you are trying to disprove stockpiling without regard for whether it is true or not. And the reason I say that is because you don't even attempt to explain what happened to the extra units that were produced in July through October but weren't sold at retailers. By definition the fact that month after month those units were unnaccounted for means that they were stockpiled...for what is hard to say but there was absolutely a great deal of stockpiling going on.

Now, with that said it does not mean that stockpiling is the cause of the up & down fluctuations we are currently seeing in the weekly numbers. In fact I'm actually fairly skeptical of the idea that stockpiling could be used to account for these changes since stockpiling is something they could easily control. I seriously doubt they would stockpile with such rollercoaster like ups and downs when a flat steady rate of stockpiling is not only far more logical and easier to implemement but also has the exact same effect.

In summary, I disagree with your assessment of the holidays quite a bit.  I will say I'm not sold on your current theory for the fluctuations either but I don't see anything that jumps out as patantly wrong for now...then again I am having a bit of a hard time following you since there is definitely something being lost in translation so to speak.  But I'm not willing to dismiss your view simply for that reason and will remain undecided on the matter for now. 

The quote says both things. I never denied that they flew in some Wiis last year, in fact I have believed so for some time now. My point is that they did both things, stockpiling included, and the quote I posted proves it without any doubt.

Regarding your calculations, I'd just like to point out one thing - you assumed that all of January's first two weeks of supply were shipped by plane for December, which can't be the case since shipments weren't null for those two weeks. Therefore, you're overestimating the number of flown units, and you're underestimating the number of stockpiled units.

For this month's situation and SSBB's launch, I guess we'll have to wait and see, not enough information is available yet.

Well done explaining the Christmas extras... I hadn't seen it like that.

It has been fairly obvious to me since 2 weeks ago when about 90k were sold that it is for the most part just a shipment issue. Stockpiling does not cause the sales to go up and down all the time.

I think I am fairly sure stockpiling does happen, but yes Nintendo was unable to do it to the levels they should... and it's obvious not all of the extras for Q3 were from saving stock, they might not have done it at all for Europe (and there was little need in Japan)

Perhaps they are stockpiling a little for Brawl release, but we would not be able to tell that from watching weekly sales and it certainly wouldn't have caused this fall to 40k.

Just Bens explanation explains the january numbers, and to some extent maybe even february (moved some from feb to jan), so he's not excactly off. But shipping some of planned stock for january doesn't exclude stockpiling. Neither from december nor january.

I wrote an incredibly long answer to an about equal post, but I can't find it (it isn't in my post-section for some reason)


Here it is:
http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=18013

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