Well another possibility that comes to my mind is that shops stockpiling them for MP3. Would make sense. Shops don't make money with the Wii, they make money with the software. If you have more hardware the time a big game hits (Madden, MP3) it helps you to sell more software with the unit itself. Does make sense to me.

It is likely that Nintendo is attempting to increase production and this would (potentially) cause some reduction in current output.

Production Lines within factories will often be upgraded, new production lines added, new factories will be built or old factories will be retrofitted ... This all means that new employees will be hired while experienced employees may be moved, production lines will be shut down for quality checks and so on.

Essentially, for weeks (or months) you can see lower production with the tradeoff of much higher production when your upgrades are complete; as consumers we may not even see this increased production immediately because the hardware may be set aside for use with game releases/christmas (or simply until they announce increased production).

I could be wrong though ...

Ummm....

Because there are always fluctuations in shipments and sales of every system, expecially when they sell out?

A 10% deviation from any given number isn't significant enough to extrapolate any issues with falling sales. It could be upto stockpiling (but for what?), shipping problems, or production ramp-ups....Or just no real reason at all.

This should have been the last post about this. Because this is totally what they're doing. So Santa can make kids happy.

I'm still suprised that Nintendo isn't slowly ramping up supply, I guess they could be trying to build some more momentum heading into the Holidays (making the Wii, the must buy item).

Good to know Happy Squrriel.

The easy awnser is stockpiling. It would be bad for Nintendo to miss the holiday season. If there are no Wiis at Christmas, people will be m ore likely to take a competitor's console. It could also help their bottem line. As there lots of Wiis avaliable at one point in time, interest for the system will increase.

Metroid prime 3 corruption stockpiling...

i don't know how the things work in US...but here in Italy there's a thing called Summer, and HERE in Summer a decline in sales is perfectly normal..why in the world should a boy/man keep thinking about the latest videogame while outside the sun shines and girls wear shorter skirts?

C'mon people. What's the point of stockpilling? What's the difference if sale is steady. Why selling 800k a month for 11 months and 2 million in December is better than selling 900k for a whole year?

It makes it the "Hot thing" For the hollidays.