It's like that Seinfeld episode where George the exact opposite of what his instincts tell him to do. And as a consequence, he's successful for the whole episode. As long as George (Nintendo) does the opposite of his instincts (Pachter), he'll be fine...

OT: Nintendo is being conservative I believe with their Wii shipments but since Jan, we can see a real slowdown in Japan numbers and given the apparent overtracking of the Wii by VGC (saw Brett aknowledge this in the news section), maybe holiday (though still excellent) sales weren't as groundbreaking as believed, and Jan numbers in Others and Americas might be trending lower than thought too then...

It's got nothing to do with the Yen. The recession could hit the games industry yet, this is what Nintendo is accounting for.

Wii fad is over.

It's Japan. And Americas doesn't need the extra million this quarter. So they'll either slow production a bit or hold onto the extra until next holiday. There might be excess supply in Japan they need to bleed off too.

theve already said this is because sales in japan are not doing as well as they suspected. ie. no massive boost from wii music

I think Nintendo said that the cutting of the software forecasts was due to bad Japan sales. Maybe the hardware cut is the same.

It isn't a good sign, but probably not a harbinger. They could still meet the old expectations if they are feeling that they still aren't meeting demand in America or Europe.

Or maybe they just weren't able to up production as fast as anticipated.

maybe they are just lowering expectations on the off-chance that sales DO actually slow some, as to not piss off investors.

is there some kind of bad consequence to always keeping expectations low when you always end up getting better results?

I suspect Nintendo is just playing it safe. By lowering their profit expectations they avoid dissapointing share holders and the public if for some reason the Wii didn't meat expectations. I suspect the Wii will continue to sell out of stores across this year, its broad appeal helps it sell out.

Personally, i think the shipment forecast is simply about their inability to get production up to quite where they expected it to. They also cut their financial forecast, which is more due to the strong yen against the weak dollar and pound sterling.

That could also explain why December NPD sales were lower than November's (per week), so it's a sound theory. As I recall it, they were hoping to increase production slightly for the holiday period, so maybe they didn't stockpile enough units.