I like following the sales on this site but i have never been a big fan of the whole prediction thing.  I was however just looking at the most recently updated 'hardware by sales' chart and noticed something interesting, admittedly it is only for a few weeks but It would appear as though a pattern is developing.  There has been a series of peaks and troughs over the last few weeks, with sales topping out at about 400 000 and bottoming out at about 200 000.

 My theory, perhaps Nintendo has started stockpiling early, but have decided to only do it on every second shipment in order to keep supply channels a little fuller.  We all know Nintendo is claiming that it's making 1.8 million/month, but that is currently not indicated in sales data so either they are lying or they are holding stock back even at this early stage (perhaps just for Wii Fit's launch as other people have suggested)

 Anyway, as for my prediction, assuming that what we are actually seeing is a pattern. I say Wii is going to sell 219 000 (random number just above 200 000) systems next week.

 Any others thoughts, theories, predictions, or is it all just chance?

I think since there are 12 months for a 52 week year, instead of 13 four week months for a 52 week year, there is a cycle in planning for each of the big three, and since odd and even numbered weekly month lengths come predictably, there are different amounts of a console produced each week because the production has to be matched to big games, price cuts, holidays, etc.

So instead of thinking well 1.8 million * 12...divided by weeks

(21.6 million) / (52) which is 415.384k per week produced 

You have to look at it as something like:

21,600,000 = (5 weeks)(x normal demand)(4) + (4 weeks)x normal demand)(2) + (43 weeks) (x normal demand)  

Basically:       December/Jan      Nov/Apr        Rest of the Year

21.6 million =         20x +            8x            +  43x

(Dec/Jan are peak periods in the USA & Europe, Japan respectively,  November and April are secondary peaks - with November huge in the USA, and April bigger than normal usually in Europe and Japan for Golden Week & Easter)

So in reality:

21,600,000 = 71x

Which would mean in reality only 300k Wiis are being made right now, but the average will equal 1.8 million/month by year end if Iwata keeps Nintendo at 1.8 million Wiis made per month in 2008 

...if you could somehow move April in Japan and Europe (not as big as in Japan) and Nov in the USA and Europe (not as big as in the USA) to the same period worldwide, and have January in Japan when the USA/Europe have December boosts 

you could be onto something, but I say its just sort of random weather its 300k, 250k, 400k whatever!

I think for this next week it will go down since it was just 395k, I'll go ahead and predict 325,000.

Cool, thanks for the explanation.

the Source has a point

The Korea and China launch are upcoming. I'm not sure about China, but it should do ok in Korea, where they purchased over a million DS in less than a year. From what I read, it's possible that the Wii could launch as early as May in Korea. I'd guess they'd want to launch before the Olympics in China as well.

I predict 50-100k each for the Chinese and Korean launches.

The weekly ups and downs on vgchartz are based on ioi's limited sources. There won't be a way to verify or falsify them until the end of time so just leave them as they are and don't think too much about them.

 He is the man with the numbers.

Oh and although my reasoning was shot down, i'll still stick by my prediction just for the hell of it.