TalonMan, Why do you have to freak out if I use the same facts as you? Everybody has to bring their own facts? Oh, wow, you're such a great mod. If I spent a lot of time searching for old press reports with NPD data that would be hard to follow anyway. So why not just go with comparing vgchartz JAP+nintendo.co.jp. 200k difference in Japan equaled 10+ weeks of sales which is not marginal and would be a big error in ioi's numbers.

This site is biased against MS. The numbers smack of BS when you read them. Come on. How can MS say they shipped 10.4 million by january and this site have a figure of 9.94 five months later? That's hilarious. All because they want that POS Will to catch up?? It's delusional if you ask me. Wii salses have been falling in NA anyhow.

 That's easy -- MS reports consoles shipped. This site tracks consoles sold to end users. Therefore, there will be a disparity between the two, and that disparity should precisely coincide with the number of consoles sitting in retail stores.

And Wii sales have not been falling in NA: they've actually increased over the last few months. Evidence:

http://www.vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii&reg1=America&cons2=Wii&reg2=America&cons3=Wii&reg3=America&weekly=1

It has small peaks and valleys that are almost certainly in line with shipment variations, but one should note that the Wii is selling better now than at any point since last Christmas. In other words, the Wii sales are increasing. 

lol Get a grip. You know in all my travels I've come to notice that Wii owners are the most defensive of all.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion. I've noticed that, atm, PS3 owners are very defensive.

Rogerbandodger, I can see why your "travels" would make you think Wii owners to be so defensive... In your last few posts you(in a fine example of fanboyism) called the Wii a POS and stated that Wii sales are dropping. Every sales tracking source says otherwise. If I went around calling 360/PS3 a POS and implied their sales are going down(which is very true for PS3), I imagine I'd be seeing a lot of defensive 360 and PS3 owners. Touche'.

Well, Wii sales were decreasing, but demand wasnt. Decrease was due to shortage of sales. This has been addressed in since April, and Wii sale numbers are much higher. He may have exagerated, but there was a decrease in sales during the first 2 months of the year.

TalonMan, Ok, I got it now. I didn't mean to say that you were lying. Sorry if that came off wrong! I just think that while many people believe that Nintendo reports "sold to consumers" they really don't and that's why I called it an urban myth, which should have been "urban legend" actually (sorry, it's not my native language), something that sounds cool and many believe but is not necessarily true. Regarding the footwork - I checked your numbers one by one and found out they were correct. Then I searched the margin for fiscal 2002 myself since you only had 2003 to 2005. So it was not exactly nothing. But I'm glad we can talk about these numbers now because I still think I have a point about them. You ask "How do you know 200k is enough for 10+ weeks". Well I do know because we're talking about the past (2002-2005) and I checked vgchartz' weekly Japanese sales data to compare if 200k actually was enough for retailers to fill their shelves. Here is what I found: Japanese GC sales per calendar quarter Q1'02 - 367,016 Q2'02 - 115,838 Q3'02 - 185,697 As you can see, in the quarter after Nintendo's 2002 Annual Report (Q2'02) retailers sold just 116k GC units, much less than the 240k I say were on shelves. You say it's just 8% of Japanese LTD sales, I say it's 200% of what retailers were actually able to sell in the following 3 months. Turns out 240k was probably too much stock in that quarter.

ioi, TalonMan thinks (like others) that Nintendo reports "sold to consumers" in their financial reports, and I think they report "sold to retail".

Ok well here's what I found in the 2005 financial report you linked then.

Page 29: "Since its launch in September 2001, worldwide cumulative units sales have reached 18.5 million." as of March 2005. VGChartz Hardware *Shipments* page lists GC at 18.51 million shipped units as of March 2005.

Pages 33-34 show "Cumulative Unit Sales on a Consolidated Basis"

Page 33 shows 3.8 million GC sold in Japan as of March 2005. VGChartz says 3.8 million GC shipped in Japan as of March 2005.

Page 34 shows 10.46 million GC sold in the Americas and 4.24 million GC sold in Others as of March 2005. VGChartz says 10.46 million shipped to Americas and 4.25 million shipped to Others.

Do you still think that Nintendo's "sales" are really not just shipped to retailers? Yes GC sell-through was at 3.74 million in Japan at the end of March 2005, but 60,000 consoles on the shelves is actually a lot when you're only selling 4,000 a week as the GC was in Japan at that time. And as you can see VGChartz has the hardware shipments at exactly the 3.8 million that Nintendo reported as sales.

VGChartz Hardware Shipments as of March 2005