Wait, are there still Wii shortages somewhere around the world? I went to a few local stores over a year ago, and none of the staff had even heard of any shortages.

Yes. In the U.S. it is still very difficult to find one. Not impossible like it once was , but very difficult.

If we use an extension of my production/shipment table. without any airshipping they should be able to get 42 million shipped by the end of the year minimum (with it it could be over 43)

and that is using an immediate 1.8 to 2.4 million increase for July, wheras it might be more of a gradual process between now and July (3 months with more than 1.8 million production but less than 2.4) if so we could add another 800-1000k on top of either of those numbers.

so the shipped figure we should see for the end of December will be at least 42 million, and possibly as high as 44 million.
(the steps to increase to 2.4 may also have started before April, so we could add even more if true, though not likely to be more than 200k extra)

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oh yeah here is the table (it uses an estimate of 5-6 weeks between "produced" and "shipped" consoles [the time it takes from factory to America/Europe], which means to find the shipped number you generally need to look 1.5 cells up into the cumulative production, of course this changes for stockpiling or air shipping)

I wasn't too far off then in my "expected and unexpected" thread a while back, stating that they'd up production to 2.25 million around mid year or summer.
Not dead on but not a swing and miss either, now for reports of KH 3 Wii...

2.25 million by mid year? I'd say that was a pretty damn good call.

First, I'd like to apologize for bumping an old thread even though it's only a couple weeks old and not months/year old threads that I so dread being necrobumped.  Anyway, with the recent release of NPD numbers it was fun to see some of the meltdowns at neogaf.  Of course I didn't read the whole thread, but one particular "arguement" that I saw was that the Wii only sells due to the hype caused by its constant shortages.  In other words if they would increase production to the point that a Wii would be readily available everywhere than it would slow down in sales.

Now I'm pretty sure a slow down in sales would lead to stock being left on shelves, but I'm not trying to counter that point.  What gets me is the claim that Nintendo is creating an artificial shortage and isn't doing everything they can to meet the demand.  Of course this is something forum regulars are used to hearing for about 15 months now.

I know Stever89 and Viper1 already touched on it, but I was curious as to some actual figures for the previous "fastest selling home console," the PS2.  So I took a look at http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps2_e.html and turned it into the following table.  Note that this is Produced numbers(as in from the factory) not Shipped numbers(as in to retail), so there is no data past March of '07 but it's pretty safe to say that numbers are lower now than at the peak.  Also note that 2000 only contains 1 month for Q1 and 10 months for the year, although it's quite obvious that units were produced before they went on sale.

Nintendo's current rate of production is higher than all but 7 of the PS2's quarters, and as far as Jan-March goes only once was PS2 produced at a higher rate.  If ramping goes according to schedule and the rate is increased to 2.4M a month, than Nintendo's average for the year will be at least 2.1M a month which is higher than any year for the PS2.

wow nice numbers, I thought I had seen this thread be4 when it came up! thanks for information, it was worth bringing this thread back from the dead. but you could have made your own thread!!! and got lots of hits to it

^I think PS2 (actual production) peaked at 2.2 million per month, of course some quarters will look higher than that at time like Christmas etc as consoles are shifted from quarter to quarter.

The Wii is being prepared for 2.4 million per month about 1 year earlier than PS2 was at 2.2.

Wii is on track to blow past the PS2 lifetime sales. :D

I blame Wii Fit!

No really, how much can it really sell at that price? North America's sales are always on par with shipments but when you think about it, US has a population of about 300 million, and Nintendo has already sold at least 10 million Wiis on the country (I assume the rest were sold in other countries of the Americas).

Right now there are 30 persons for every Wii in US! But of course households aren't composed by just one person (at least that's not common at all), so let's assume now that per every Wii sold there's at least 3 persons that have access to it (I think it's a bigger number than just 3).

Doing simple math we come to the conclusion that at lest 1 of every 10 households on the US has a Wii! That's a 10% of the population that has access to it!

So can the Wii sale a lot more than 10 million in the US?? sure it can, there are at least 45 million PS2s in the US and that means that at least 1 of every 2.3 househols in the US have access to a PS2 (almost 50% of US population). But the PS2 has done that through 7 years, several price cuts and a redesign!

So the Wii will keep selling out in the US for a while? My theory is that the Wii will hit a wall when it reaches 20 million units sold in the US, wich will happen in a year if not less if the production rate is raised to 2.4million units per month (this Christmas will be huge, Wii Fit will sell forever and there will be other good health concious games for the system soon).

At 20 million units sold in the US the Wii will have reached 20% of its population, and the console will just go down in sales not because people will stop wanting it, just because 250$ will be a little too much for them. Nintedo will be still shipping 2.4 million Wiis worldwide so they will have to make a price cut for the console, not just in the US but all over the world (if they only lower the price in the US europeans would be really ripped off), my theory is that the price cut will be of just 30$ because it will be an experiment that Nintendo makes just to see how the market moves, doing the cut with a big game release would be the most logical move, and then the Wii will start to sell out in the US for months until christmas 2009!

I know there must be something wrong with my theory, but please tell me what you think!