I am dissapointed I expected 1 million on the first month.

It was a failed launch in most respects other than to generate consumer interest in the title.

Obviously it was supply constrained (for real this time; not the generic excuse typically used for every time something fails to meet expectations) or you wouldn't have most vendors trying to flip them on Amazon Marketplace for about $100 over MSRP.

For every one unit sold at over 100% mark up, Nintendo probably could have moved at least 3 units at retail, had they been available.

So far, if the $30m marketing campaign is correct, and not something exaggerated by Nintendo's PR people, it means they spent over $30 in marketing costs per $90 unit sold in the NA region.

They should have pushed the NA debut back a quarter so they could have had at least 3m units available for the 1st month of release which is what I thought had been the plan.

I expect to see a fair amount of stock of both consoles and Wii Fit this week to coincide with the release of MGS4. If not and we see another sub 100k week, Nintendo needs to put a temporary stop on the TV spots and marketing efforts until they have enough product to meet demand.

But reggie said before that Wii fit shipments doubled in NA after the success of Wii Fit in japan right? How come it only have 600,000+ in this past month?

I'm disappointed in so much as it's going to be difficult for them to build enough inventory for the holidays. It's rather staggering to think they have to create a surplus now for the holidays, but such is the nature of Wii Fit.

uh..woops....maybe I have you confused with someone else. 

But I still don't think we should expect similar numbers from WiiFit, not only because WiiFit is a new franchise, but also because they can fit 10-20 times more of Brawl and MKWii into a box to be shipped than they can of WiiFit.  Logistics plays a huge part in shipment numbers, as we have seen with the console itself.  

That's the only conceivable reason I can see for an earlier NA launch. That gives Nintendo two quarters to move product prior to the holiday season rush and satisfy a fair amount of the demand.

I'm guessing that their marketing budget is either a protracted one, explaining the unusually high cost, or one that will step back into the public eye come November again. That's if Nintendo alotted for this type of budgeting.  

What doesn't make sense is doing a fairly limited launch month considering the amount of hype that was generated by the PR guys.

Thinking the roughly $10/share drop in NTDOY since Wii Fit was released may not be coincidence.  

Pachter says NA shipments were diverted due to the low dollar.

Well, some will take this as a sign that VGC over-tracks the Wii.
I take it as a sign that NPD under-tracks the Wii.

If you notice, VGC pretty much was on par with the NPD in Wii hardware sales -- while others (such as Patcher) had it higher.

Also, just remember, NPD is estimating Wal-Mart and Toys R Us sales using past data. And that may just not cut it with this system and this software.

Mike from Morgantown

IF you can't figure it out, I have far more trust in VGC than NPD. I work with Census data in my job and see how bad the intercensal estimates are found to be when the decennial census is taken. So I would rather trust a community effort where methods are explained than a corporate without transparency.

I was willing to give that theory a chance until I saw the corresponding sales for Others and Japan. They are not high enough to show that a significant number of units were diverted from NA.

I still think the first 4 weeks of sales for Others will be higher than the corresponding first 4 weeks for NA, which would support that theory.