will the DSi sales be added into the DS totals? If they will I say no, but if they aren't added in and are given their own separate entry then I think the Wii can pull it out

I don't really know. I don't think it will beat the Ps2 by much.

- It is looking like it is going to sell ~ 8M less than the Ps2 did in Japan.

- Ps2 had a high failure rate, and many re-purchases.

Still, the Wii has some huge demand. I believe it will sell out next year, so it will be at ~ 73M just then.

With pretty much in the middle of 1/3 and 1/4 people buying the Wii at 250$, how many more won't buy it at 199 or 149?

I think what we might see with the Wii, is that more and more titles directed at the public will be 29.99, or even 19.99 at launch.

For many people, the Wii will be a DVD player, in the sense that when they're bored, they might buy a game instead of a movie. I'm not sure how big this will be, but it will certainly happen to some degree, and Nintendo might publish it a bit in that direction.

This is likely to be extra big in Europe, as it is so big that movies and such have troubles with shipments and such (for buying online).

So, I'll say that in Spain + UK+ Germany + Italy +  France could see close to a 50% in house total. That is ~ 50M just there. The rest of Europe should probably be at around 10M (Ps2 had 10M), if not a little more. Then there's around 10M from the rest of "others". Ps2 had 7.5M there, but Wii seems to be catching on in Asia, and also Australia.

So without Americas, I see it at ~ 85M.

Mexico is seeing a huge growth in video game consoles.  It is likely to see a 50% growth, but that isn't a lot. It is just a 1-2M for Wii.

For USA + Canada, I see a similar install rate. Somewhere around 50%, if not a bit above. So ~ 60M from there, with perhaps 5M from Mexico + south America.

So overall, I see it in the 150-170M range. The only way it could break out of this range, is if it really catches on in Asia. China is seeing a huge growth. Will Wii catch on there? It is doubtful, but China is so large that if it does, that could easily mean another 20M. That is why that my range is rather than 140-160M 150-170M.

 PS: Thanks for the compliment on my previous post. I was afraid that it didn't really connect in places, but it appears it did.

Consoles actually always outsell handhelds, and the Wii is tracking above the DS for the same time period so far.

The Wii will outsell the DS.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I Triple this.

There are a few things about handhelds that give them major advantages over consoles. I'm not sure how much they would affect sales, but it should be enough to push DS over the top:

• A console can satisfy an entire household, whereas a handheld may be purchased for each person. This is most obvious in Japan, where the DS sales are going beyond home consoles' limit.
• People lose their handhelds. I personally know ~4 people that "acquired" their DS by finding it lost somewhere. Remember, many DS owners are kids.
• They break. People drop them, and the DS isn't as sturdy as old Nintendo handhelds. Again, kids break stuff. If it were the PS2 we were talking about, this may be cancelled out, but the Wii is much more reliable and won't be replaced much.
• Different models. We know for sure the DSL and DSi will/is adding plenty of sales, whereas the Wii will probably never change. The console is already smaller than the slim PS2.

I think the Wii will outsell the DS in America, but it will be very hard to keep up in Others. Even if it's selling faster from launch, the Wii will hit its saturation point much faster. There just aren't enough families out there to reach those heights...

Nintendo is netorios for new models with minor changes to increase demand.

Some simple changes they could do:

   1. Change Color

   2. Put in more memory  (ie: 2GB instead of 512mb)

   3. Something unexpected

You meant Sony right?

The only thing nintendo does is change colors.

It's rather hard to call what will happen, but I think that the Wii has a more-than-even chance of surpassing the DS in the long run. The reason for this is simple enough: the DS, while a Blue Ocean product, is not disruptive. The market did not reshape itself when the DS emerged, and it took disruptive software made for the DS (Nintendogs, Brain Age, et. al.) to cause it to have a large-scale effect.

The Wii, on the other hand, is inherently disruptive as well as Blue Ocean. Historically, disruptive products which change markets far outstrip even their next-best competition by miles (just see how the horse-drawn buggy market faded once the Model T took off). That alone gives it an edge which Nintendo is trying to artificially inject into the DS by association (the DS and Wii, Nintendo's tag team to victory!). If that strategy is effective, then it's a true toss-up as to which will be on top in the end.

Either way, Nintendo wins...

All very interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing the ideas, everybody.

It's a shame we don't have any accurate way to track actual userbases as opposed to units sold. It would be interesting to see how many people own a Wii (perhaps as many as three per family) compared to how many people own a DS (where I have no idea what the numbers are).