It's once again time to examine whether the Wii can reach 50% before the end of the year, especially with NPD's numbers showing an extreme amount of Wii's sold compared to PS3+360s in November (nearly 2:1).
Obviously, it's never whether the Wii can make it, it's whether Nintendo can ship enough. Here are some graphs showing November through the week for which we have data (week ending Dec 6th) for both of 2007 and 2008.
Since it's probably too wide for most to see, here's a link to the picture.
On the left is 2007 sales, and the middle column is 2008 sales. To estimate 2008 sales that we don't have yet, I simply used the % Change from 2007 (seen immediately below 2007 sales). To the right of 2008's sales is the change year-over-year. On the bottom is the current sales, the estimated total sales at the end of the year (or well, technically the first week ending on or after the years end), and then the difference in total sales between the Wii and PS3+360.
Using last years percent changes, the Wii is only behind by about 1.2 million.
Now there's a few problems overall - the biggest one being that the Wii was so supply constrained last year in both the Americas and Others that it's hard to say what it's percent change should have been (or could have been... scary to think about). Also note that this is NOT a Nov vs Dec comparison, since the first part contains the first week in Dec, which is also why America sees a drop in the "Dec" sales, when we normally expect it to increase. Finally, price cuts, and major games releasing, though I think the price cuts affect this more overall, with the 360 seeing a 155% increase YoY in Others because of its price cut, so obviously using last years percent changes isn't going to work quite as well.
So here is an updated view of how I feel it may work out. Here's also a link, and I'll end by going over some of the changes I made and why I feel they may come to pass.
Basically, the idea is that the Wii is going to be down less (in otherwords - up) from last year, way more than one would normally expect, due to more supply. How much, is hard to say, especially in Others and America. The PS3 will probably be down more during this because it's down this year overall already. The 360 will be up more in Others (thanks to price cut), up in Japan, and down less in America.
Of course this isn't perfect, and with Wii's supply it's really impossible to know where sales will be at. But under this, the Wii is only 500,000 away from being at 50%, meaning it should be at 49.79% (if not higher).
Overall, I feel if the Wii can sell 7.5 million in the next 4 weeks (3 weeks before Christmas, one week after), it'll actually make it, blowing past my end of year prediction for it. 360 will also be higher than I expected, but the PS3 will be lower than I expected by about the same amount.
Seems only a few weeks ago we ruled it out. Thoughts?
