I do not think we will have a month long period of no shipments in NA like we did last year. I think at most they diverted 50% of January's stock. which means they would still have 1.2 million to sell duing that month WW. Then after that they begin the holiday stockpiling and stockpiling for big releases.

If production is 2.4 million than I see no more that 1.7 or 8 million sold in Anymonth. Last January production was still at 1.8 million, and they airlifted most of their January Supply. Febuary was slower due to SSBB, MKWII, and WiiFit additional stockpiling (on top of the usual holiday stash buildup).

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think they airlifted a shipment this year.  Production was ramped up quite a bit this year compared to last and raised even higher for Novemebr&December.  Last year they really struggled to stockpile and were forced to airlift shipments that would have come later down the pipeline to keep disappointed customers to a minimum.  Although it was still hard to find a Wii in many areas this year, the increase in production meant Nintendo could more readily satisfy demand  throughout the year while also stockpiling for the holidays.  Of course they COULD airlift some shipments, but it probably wouldn't be worth the cost this time.

Thats not happening in january 2008 right? The sales actually increase than its previous year january 2007. So whats really the tiopic here?

I don't think we're going to see some sort of collapse like we saw last year. But given how insane Oct-Dec has been for the Wii, it may seem underwhelming.

I'd anticipate 500-700k in January in the USA, and around 500k sold through worldwide.

No, IMO there won't be that desperate airshipping that sucked up all the Jan. stock last time. But the dropoff might look almost as bad due to the insanely huge holiday sales.

LOL at the bold text.

They are expecting at least 52M shipped by start of April, right? Of course, as they increased production for holidays, perhaps 53M (I find it more likely, Nintendo's claims are always on the conservative side). Possibly 54M.

This means 50-52.5M sold (big range, I know)

So, as we're looking at 46-46.5M ETY 08, this means there might just be 4-6M for the 13 (or 12) weeks.

I really doubt it would be as low as 4M, but 5M is possible. That's 400K/week.

So we're really looking at 350K to 450K weekly (pessimistic to optimistic). I think it will be in the lower part of that range

For a comparison, these are the sales this year (for 13 weeks ending 5th April).

Wii: 4.13M (320K/Week)

Ps3: 2.43M (187K/week)

X360: 1.72M (132K/week)

Wii sales in Q2 = 6M

Wii sales in Q3 = 4.8M

So there wasn't really a huge shortage in Q1 08 (they unleashed stockpiles in Q2 along with MKWii to counter GTA IV).

If we follow that trend, we're looking at 5M for each quarter, and 13M for holidays. Q1 will be slightly smaller (~ 4.5-4.75M) which is 350-375K

So, using these 2 methods, I see ~ 5M for Q1 08, perhaps slightly lower. This means ~ 375K weekly.

For January (excluding week ending 3rd, I consider that to be 08), we could be looking at at low as 1.2M (~ 1/4 of total sales, if past trends are to be trusted). That's 300K/week (for January), but would mean 420K/week for February/March.

So 275K-325K for January weeks (not counting last week of 08). First will be lower (ala 225K?) and then up to 325K for the other 3 weeks.

This means we will not be seeing any "the Wii is doomed" threads (except for maybe in single territories), as we're looking at 360 selling 175-200K/week in January, and Ps3 selling 100-125K/week. (total = ~ 300K as well), meaning a pretty much exactly 50-50 share between Wii and Ps360.

Big drop means more people wanting to spend Christmas Money on the Wii, which they can't do now that it's out of stock. So more demand.

You guys do realize there's supposed to be a big drop from December to January because some thing called Christmas is over. Many people have spent a lot of their money. 

It's not smart stock management to ship out large quantities of product in January. 

This is also why virtually no game company ever releases a big game in January ... it's not some coincidence. 

January is a time for the game industry to catch its breath. 

They will ship and sell more than Sony or Microsoft will in January, be content with that. 

@ swoosh, last January the Wii was completely out of stock almost everywhere, hence it had much lower sales than you would expect for the leading console in January. This is because Nintendo airlifted the stock that would have been sold in January if it had shipped, so that they could sell it in December.

Galaki is curious as to whether this happened this year as well