It all depends on how long the Wii stays on the market...

Yes it might be innovative and fun to play now, but when the 360 and PS3 are being exploited to their full potential will people still want to play on the Wii...?

It's possible, but at this point, I think it will fall short.

Despite some initial mistakes, PS3 is a stronger competitor than GC was and GC really appealed only the more faithful Nintendo users, subtracting very few potential buyers from PS2, so Wii will need to sell for more than 7, perhaps 8, years to hope to surpass PS2. BTW PS2 still sells, so keeping on moving away the goal.

The problem with this, is that while the Wii was supply constrained in the beginning. the Ps2 wasn't, because it had 5 or so months only in Japan, making it have enough supply for that.

The DS had the same situation as the Wii and was supply constrained for a long time.

Look at how it took off compared to the Ps2. http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=Wii&reg1=Japan&cons2=DS&reg2=Japan&cons3=PS2&reg3=Japan&weeks=300

The Ps2 started out a lot faster than Wii, but the Wii has just recently become less supply constrained, and the Ps2 lost some of its momentum in Japan over time.

Still, I think it will be fairly close. Wii will be within 5M of it, either above or belove.

 Yes.

On a long enough timeline, I suspect the Wii will surpass the PS2 easily enough. There's this continuing misconception that Japanese Wii sales are somehow free from the worldwide shortage of the system, but that's simply not true. Japan gets the smallest shipment of all the regions, and the least advertising too (most notably in the form of not having Wii Sports packed in with the system).

At this point, Nintendo is basically sacrificing the Japanese market (which is the smallest) to capture the European and American markets (which are the largest). Their product is still one-of-a-kind enough that, once they shift their attention more to Japan, they'll be able to capture the market and have sales take off easily enough. The only thing really necessary for that to happen is a combination of more systems in stock and more dedicated advertising.

^

So what your point is, is that the reason we see little, or almost no, bumps in the sales in Japan, is that they always deliver about 50K/week there? I'm not quite sure if I understood that part.

I don't profess to know the shipment schedule of the Wii to Japan. However, it is widely known as to how many systems they produce each month and how many they intend to make by certain deadlines. And Japan's sales have not been significantly lower than what they've been shipped; they've been pretty much selling out of the system on a weekly basis just like America and Europe, if at a slower pace per week than those regions due to the lack of comparative media blitz and compelling pack-in.

That said, the shipments do appear to be selling out consistently enough. They're not in a severe shortage the way the US and Europe are, but they're not exactly taking the sorts of tactics one would expect of a company trying to sell humongous quantities of a product, either.

I agree. If Nintendo was willing to gamble on success the way Son is, then the Wii would have a very good chance of overwhelming the PS2 sales record. The Wii has much broader appeal in terms of demographics and also there are more people in the world with leisure time. However the Wii is supply constrained, so Nintendo is not even trying to open every market it could.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World comes out June 26. I expect a small spike in Wii Sales, there's also Mario Stadium Baseball on June 19, I expect a tiny spike then as well.