I just found this when going through some old posts....

 

My Wii predictions:

July, Aug, Sept, Oct will average at around 1,035,000 each month.
Nov will be about 1,700,000.
Dec Will be About 3,200,000.

Calender year end total of 18,090,000.

Then Jan, Feb, March '08 average monthly sales of 1,125,000.

Fiscal year end total of 21,465,000.

Thats from back in mid July actually.

I don't remember what some of my basis for that breakdown was, but I doubt it was anything too deep.

Anyways on the topic at hand: From what I am getting out of your last two posts I seem to have at least convinced you that it's not a gauruntee they aren't stockpiling. It seems like you are adopting a wait and see approach now and I am fine with that honestly.

I also wanted to add that one of my points I have made I think in this thread but if not in other threads, is that retailers can stockpile also and they have HUGE incentive to do so. I would almost go as far as to say it would be foolhardy for them not to stockpile. Having Wii's in the heart of the holidays when nobody else does can bring a LOT of people into your store to gift shop that would of gone other places. The reason this sort of thing could make a big difference is because the tactic isn't feasible for smaller stores like a gamestop, but it is for a Target, Best Buy, or Walmart type store that has a robust supply chain and warehouses galore acrossed the country.

Edit: This is of course a shift from shipped weeks and makes our job of figuring out what the hell happened even more difficult, but its not impossible.  And if anything could make us both correct in a wierd way.  You could be correct that supply has been increasing to support the holidays and I could end up being correct about the stockpiling.  It's wierd stuff like this that make these discussions interesting...but ultimately hard to determine the outcome.

re retailers stockpiling,
I can agree with that up to a point, because retailers can actually increase their revenues by selling their Wiis on Christmas rather than now, unlike Nintendo. There's still the cost to run a warehouse and cost of capital though, so Walmart and co shouldn't go overboard with that.

re wait and see,
I have been adopting this strategy for a while, after Nintendo surprised us 2 times with their last 2 quarterly reports. In April the Wii figure was much lower than anyone had thought, while in July it was reassuringly high. I'm not taking Vgchartz' or NPD's or Media Create's sold-to-consumers figures as the sold-to-retail gospel anymore, and I think that was reflected in my first post in this thread which referred to business sense and the last fiscal reports from Nintendo.

re your edit,
Yeah, I guess there could be a situation where neither of the opinions can be proven wrong by the facts.

in December [and part of Nov for USA] last year you say Nintendo shipped 3.2 million.... if they are planning to ship "substantially more" then using your 30% thats 4.2 million already... add a normal month and a half [Oct+1/2Nov] makes almost 6 million for the quarter.... not including the extra couple of weeks missed due to Jp/Eu not launching in November.
Now i know you say Reggie was refering to US only with the statement but even if he is nintendo are not going to increase christmas supply in America only.
i think it might be closer to 6 million for nov-dec making a 7 mil quarter, so maybe a 35-40% increase.

stockpiling is also good for all of the above reasons and also as it's Xmas, people are more likely to buy more games and accessories with a console