Ail you had expected Wii shipments to be like 22m you missed by a larger margin than I did. Nintendo wouldn't project 26m if they believed they couldn't beat it. Even last year they initially forecast 25m.
I do see a rise in Wii sales on Punch Out and EA Active. The preorders suggest Punch Out Wii can do a couple hundred thousand week one, maybe half a million. I was flipping around the TV today during the Phillies game and saw half a dozen 30 second to full minute spots. Wii is still going to be down in May from last year it just won't be down as much as you expect. June is a five week month and more EA and sees other sports titles using motion plus release which means Wii will be over 500k, and probably within 10% of what it did last June.
My position was that the decreases in Wii coincide with decreases in PS3 and Xbox 360 and PS2. Every system declined significantly on a weekly basis from March to April by double digit percentages. So even if Nintendo misses its projections, if the seasonality continues to hold true, it doesn't matter.
June should be down by a smaller margin than May since Wii had nothing big in 2008, and has alot of good content for the month. July will be up on the one week Wii Sports Resort is out, but the real push will probably come in August because Wii Sports Resort has only a few days for the month.
If Punch Out does something like 2-3x what Monster Hunter G does in Japan, I would expect a comparable hardware boost - 33% (Wii jumped from 14k to 19k in the pre-Golden week boost) because the USA market is 2-3x bigger. So by NPD figures thats Wii back to 115k/week. But EA Active is going to be big as well. I would think it could do anything from 20,000 to a 200k week one. But its the kind of thing that drives hardware because there are still only a few big excercise games on Wii: Wii Fit, Jillian Michaels, and then a pretty stiff drop off. Its similar to how the music genre used to be. I don't think its a stretch to think Wii can do 450k-600k in May, especially since Punch Out is the kind of game that should develop long, powerful legs.
There is also the possibility that since DS had a massive month, with the DSi doing over 800k at $170, that with the recession people are only buying their most wanted item. Once the DSi hoopla dies down a bit to seasonal levels, Wii is essentially set to retake the mantle as most wanted item in this industry.
What's more troubling to me is that Sony is unlikely to introduce the PSP-Go before Fall, nor is a PS3 price cut before August more likely (I'd expect the first day of NPD October). Both of those systems could flirt with 80,000-100,000 unit figures in the coming months which means if the price cut/ new model introductions don't work, Sony could miss its projections for PSP and PS3 by 10-30%. In June 2007, PS3 dipped to 98,500, which is <19,000/week.
Can you imagine the reaction if PS3 did 110k in July while Wii did 600k/700k on Wii Sports Resort? In Spring 2007, those low PS3 figures were only beaten 3:1 by Wii, and argument could be made because of price ($250 vs. $600). If PS3 does ~100k/month a few times this year, when PS3 is only 60% more than Wii ($400 vs. $250), and Wii does 500k/600k/700k there is going to be serious doubt that price is the real differentiation between the two systems, which would put Sony under pressure not to drop price, since their market share will look fairly lousy regardless of improvement, but at least maintaining profit margins they could have the games division carry the company for a while again.
