If you were in charge of when stockpiling of the Wii console would be done, would you do it:

a) Never.  Sell them as soon as they are made.

b) Only for the end of the year holiday sales. 

c) b and any new markets that N. was starting up in.

d) for large new releases, such as SSBB, Wii Fit, Mario Kart

e) Other

And if d.  How much versus estimated sales of the game would you hold in stock.  That is, if SSBB was given 1M to sell initially in America, what % of Wii would you want available to sell with that game? 

I'd do it at the very least for the same situations that Nintendo does it in:

- Big Nintendo software releases (to increase software sales)
- Holiday periods, because people giving gifts won't wait until January
- Wii Launches (China and Korea later this year), because... they just have to.

Regarding amounts, it's hard to decide and depends on too many factors which I won't pretend to know enough about.

I see absolutely NO POINT in stockpiling anything. (other than food, in case of famine)

if you can sell them (and Wii sure can) and you have a steady stream of supply (any capable manufacturing should), why would you put them aside?

I just edited my post to show the reasons why I would stockpile them (which are very likely the reasons why Nintendo stockpiled last year).

if i was nintendo, i would not have been doing any stockpiling in Q4...that would show that demand exceeds 1.8mil/month, so i could feel secure upping production to 2mil/month+stockpiling needs

so 2.3mil/month would be fine even if demand happened to be only 2mil/month, as that'd leave .3mil/month, or 2.4mil extra for Xmas, which is easily justified

of course, i believe they should be more aggressive and up production to 3mil/month right away...even if they end up exceeding demand (i don't believe they would), they could always stockpile more and then have the later production models this fall be in different colors and also lower prices in order to spark more sales...i don't see a scenario where they can't consistently sell 3mil/month this year (remember they also can stuff the channel with around 1mil wiis if they overproduce as well in order to not lose so much)


u gotta look at risk:reward

if wii's demand is well over 3mil/month during non-holiday, then u gain a lot by upping it to 3mil/month now and finding out and then u can increase again instead of going slower now

if wii's demand is only around 2mil/month during non-holiday, then u overproduce by 1mil/month, but half of that can be sold during the holiday season and the rest can be a combination of new colors, channel stuffing, china/india/new markets, price break, bundling

so ur risk isn't too high unless u have to enter a 3+year agreement for 3mil/month production

but they use multiple factories, so one of their other factories' contracts should be up sooner anyway (again, don't know the terms they work with)

so bottom line: as long as they can enter into a deal that can be cheaply ended within 1-2 years, then there isn't much reason to not up production a little more aggressively to be close to the 3mil/month range this spring

 Only reason I can see them doing stockpiling is for a launch.

But honestly, how hard is it to get a manufacture plant in China to make your console? It's been over a year now, there shouldn't be any shortage. Nintendo is running out of excuses to make more Wiis.

This has been discussed extensively in the forums. The Wii has a lot of parts, many of which aren't made in China, and which come from all sorts of different suppliers who serve lots of customers. In order to build more Wiis, you need to increase supply of every single compononent, which may entail a lot of negotiation and contracts, not to mention that suppliers also have their own constraints.

Supply chain management is hard to work with, and the fact that they're already manufacturing faster than anyone else ever manufactured a console obviously doesn't help.

Don't worry though, they'll probably announce an increase of production after the fiscal year ends (i.e. at the end of this month, more precisely when they do their fiscal report which should be in the middle or end of April).

don't forget there are two sources of stockpiling. A) by nintendo B) by retail

nintendo probably doesn't have a good reason to stockpile anymore.

retail does. for as long as wiis continue to sellout they can increase traffic in their stores simply by advertising they have wiis. why sell them when you get them when you can hold on to them for a few days, advertise in the sunday adverts, and hordes of people into your store.

retail stockpiles for brawl also makes sense. this game is certain to sell at least a couple pieces of hardware. any customers coming in for both will leave with neither if they don't have any wiis in stock.

This is why you are not in charge of anything.

i would only do it around holidays so that mothers can buy their children, or themselves, wiis. i would also increase production to at lest 2.0 million a month. if i could 2.5 so that everyone can have a wii.