No need for that, there is even big stacks of wiis available where I live.

I think that is right. And if NPD uses old models to calculate those sales -- they just get them wrong because the Wii <> GC. (<> is the same as =|=). (This is a point that I have made time and time again -- often to no avail to those out there who beleive too strongly in NPD.)

Some people think that NPD is gospel because it is a secret, subscription service. In fact, it is an estimation tracking service -- just like VGC. The only difference is that VGC has much more transparency -- it is known when it makes corrections.

The financials in two weeks will be much more instructive than these numbers with respect to hardware.

In closing, remember that NPD can be wrong!

Mike from Morgantown

Well, considering NJ5 specified America and you're from the UK, and it is now halfway through January instead of December, it seems like that's completely irrelevant?  The point is, we're talking about a major holiday season in America.  There's evidence the Wii was selling out in many retailers here.  Therefore, if Nintendo reports significantly larger US shipments than NPD tracked, it's pretty clear what happened.  Hence, waiting for the quarterly reports before adjusting anything.

@mike_intellivision: One thing that I have always wondered about is how NPD's corrections are reflected in the data they publish.

There are two possibilities:

1- Corrections are done by adding or subtracting the correction amount from later months' numbers.

2- Corrections are simply not reflected in the published data.

In case 1, we can't trust the monthly data. In case 2, we can't trust neither the monthly data nor the accumulated data.

Either way, there's something we can't trust about NPD numbers. In both cases, we can't trust the monthly data.

Yeah, it is pretty clear. Ninty did not sell everything it shipped. Omg!

I should have checked your profile first.

I love your sig by the way (I have them turned off, so I only just saw it below the rich text box) I almost want some of those pyjamas just for the novelty.

The difference might be in how to account for the absense of such data.

Since NPD once tracked Toys R Us, is has old models -- based upon actual sales from old (previous generation) consoles. If it uses those for models, it could create poor estimates.  I base this on two anecdotal factors. One is the amount of Wii specials that Toys R Us seems to run. The other is the continual decrease in space given the PS3 and now even the X360 in a Toys R Us "R Zone."  Admittedly, since NPD is not transparent in its process, it is not known if this is the case. But it is a possiblity. (And I have made this point for almost as long as I have been on VGC and known about that situation, so this is not a new explanation).

Mike from Morgantown

It wasn't really fair anyway since the PS3 never had a chance to get anywhere near 25%.  Not this year either.

Let's assume for a moment that the Wii is actually selling out in America -- that is, fewer than 10% of the retailers who carry it have it at the standard retail price.

Shipped can mean a lot of different things.  Sony used it to describe unit they shipped to warehouses and then they used "sold" to describe units they shipped to retailers.  Nintendo and Microsoft use "shipped" and "sold" interchangably to talk about units they send to retailers.

However, the shipping pipeline from China is probably at least two weeks, probably longer.  Right?  So if Nintendo is shipping 3 million per month during the holiday season, that means that at least 1.5 million could easily be sitting in a shipment pipeline.  However, during the holiday months they could also air freight them making shipped numbers only a few days from sold-to-consumer numbers for a sold-out product.

Frankly, Nintendo announcing shipped numbers provides little more than a ceiling under which sales must be.

NJ5: Even though we don't know how NPD adjusts its numbers, and we know it must, we do know that NPD is a for-pay service that the big companies trust to give numbers.  They never complain about the numbers and they often flaunt them.  They provide very detailed numbers to these companies compared to what you and I see.  If NPD numbers were wildly inaccurate (say, 50%) then they'd have a serious business problem.

My tendancy is to trust NPD over VGC despite the fact that I like VGC and am abivalent to the NPD.  I dont' care that the Wii didn't break all records for December because I know next December will be much bigger.  The Wii is really increasing in popularity here in the US, much faster than the PS2 ever did.  It outsold the DS and the DS is the current record holder.  So as Nintendo increases supply (which they will) the holiday sales will definitely get crazy.

 On the VGChartz yearly (Americas)

Top 10:

Nintendo published: 6

Wii: 5

Top 20

Nintendo published: 12

Wii: 7

Top 30

Nintendo published: 14

Wii: 8

So no, 20/30 weren't Nintendo published.

@Oyvoyvoyv: This is in Nintendo's spin: