Another reason misterd is games. When a game launches, a game that is a big deal, it always always always helps to have extra consoles on the shelf during that launch, for the people who were waiting for "that game" to finally make the jump. Christmas season is always home to big releases, and this year is no different. The need to horde consoles. They dont want some guy seeing a commercial saying Smash Bros is out, and then he runs to the store and can buy the game but the console is sold out. The more days that go by where that guy cant get the console, the more likely he is to forget about the games, or have his intrest in the diminished when another big game from the competition hits the shelves (Think MGS4 or something). Consumers only have so many dollars to spend. The last thing you want is less of your software moving because some guy has been waiting 2 months for a Wii, but gets his intrest peaked by a Halo 3 Kiosk and decided to spend his money on that instead. Instant -1 sales to your game, and your console.

Holiday and special event (launch) shoppers yield more than a summer customer to put it bluntly. Not only in total retail sales but in good will as well.

 lol

Thanks to Fishy and Xyrax for their patience and assitance.

misterd, it really breaks down to an issue of the folks looking for a Wii right now are people who want the console themselves. They are generally gaming aware and are more sure of what they want. Where as during the holidays the people buying consoles are more of a lemming (not to demean the general publics IQ lol). They are looking for the gift and they don't want to go all over hell's half acre just to find it. So they are far far more likely to give up or settle for another console than the guy who knows what he wants and was looking for it all summer.

PS - If I remember correctly, I read a thread on here a while back with I think it was Michael Pachter explaining this stuff, it might of been another forum perhaps. But he basically explained it in those terms and went on to say that it is not just a console trend its an everything popular trend, and is used by all sorts of companies.

I hate to post back to back....but its a completely different topic so whatever...

For those who think the Wii will take 5+ weeks to hit 10 million...

Wii is currently at 9,050,000 according to this site.

Sales required to meet a 10,000,000 goal within....

1 Week: 950,000 per week WW
2 Weeks: 475,000 per week WW
3 Weeks: 316,667 per week WW
4 Weeks: 235,500 per week WW
5 Weeks: 190,000 per week WW
6 Weeks: 158,334 per week WW
7 Weeks: 135,714 per week WW
8 Weeks: 118,750 per week WW

There are some noteworthy launches coming up soon, for instance, Mario Strikers at the end of July in NA, Big Brain Academy launches in Europe July 20th, the launch of DQ in japan, and Mario Party 8 launches in Japan July 26th.

Just one big week as a result of any of these games can shave off about 40k from those numbers above for 3-5 weeks.

EDIT: PS - I still think this is going to be a very close call, but I just wanted to point out that 5 weeks seems a little unlikely.  My current prediction is that they both hit their respective marks on or about week 4. In other words after week 3 but before the start of week 5. 

 Hmm, I feel obligated to remind this.

 CALL THE CROW!

ps3 win . wii is doomed ;)

A lot of crow, it may become an endangered species in the next few weeks. BTW, I didn't post, so I am going hungry (I would have said Wii).