Ail said: Somehow I am starting to doubt seriously that the Wii will ever pass the PS2... I just can't believe that 6 years from now it still would be selling 120k/month like the PS2 just did... If you believe NPD numbers the Wii is now tracking same as the PS2 was at a similar time after its launch too, roughly 80k/week. The Wii is still ahead because it had outperformed the PS2 up to now but that period is now over...

Since Nintendo likes to replace their consoles and withdraw them from the market theres a chance that the Wii won't come close to the PS2's numbers depending on when they decide enoughs enough for the Wii. They really have no incentive to keep a lower margin Wii on the market if a higher margin Wii 2 is storming up the sales charts, well at least to me.

360 : 220k
Wii : 666k
PS3 : 405k
DS : 783k
PSP : 337k

source http://www.edge-online.com/news/npd-wii-overtakes-360-us

Thats the numbers for June. If the Wii comes close to them because of Wii M+ then they are going to have another cracker year after a slow start. If they don't however, they will need a price cut to keep up sales. Now that they have commited to producing at the current rate they have to continue to do so or it will cost them.

Squilliam, you forget NES was on the market for 10 years in NA and 20 in Japan

The Wii is pretty much nearly as cheap to make as it will ever be. The Wii HD or whatever would probably be the same situation. Why would they keep the Wii on the market (Undersupported) which is also against their ethics as a company at a lower price. They would be better off with just maximising the sales of their higher margin next generation console.

Squilliam said: The Wii is pretty much nearly as cheap to make as it will ever be. The Wii HD or whatever would probably be the same situation. Why would they keep the Wii on the market (Undersupported) which is also against their ethics as a company at a lower price. They would be better off with just maximising the sales of their higher margin next generation console.

First off there will not be a Wii HD, the next Nintendo console will be another market disruption, as Sony and MS move into the motion control region Nintendo will just change the game one more time.

 

Secondly keeping the Wii on the market isn't against their philosophy, they just haven't had a system since the NES that was so dominant that it was able to remain viable after its successor came out, in addition keepin the Wii on the makrket will be cheap for them at that point, it'll be a high profit machine that they can continue to just let the market buy if it wants

We will have to wait and see before saying Wii sales will get boosted, so far it looks like it's on a downards trend and there's nothing significantly big that could help sales go up again until WSR which comes in late July, so until August sales could be down a lot. Probably the last 5 months of the year will be better, but the following two months could end up being abysmal in YoY comparisons.

Wii
January 2009 679,200
February 2009 753,000
March 2009 601,000
April 2009 340,000
May 2009 289,500
Wii
January 2008 274,000
February 2008 432,000
March 2008 721,000
April 2008 714,200
May 2008 675,100
June 2008 666,700
July 2008 555,000
August 2008 453,000
September 2008 667,000
October 2008 803,000
November 2008 2,040,000
December 2008 2,150,000

Total 10,151,000

 

YoY Jan  +405K units
YoY Feb  +321K units
YoY Mar  -120K units
YoY Apr   -374K units
YoY May  -386K units

2009 YTD  2663K units
2008 YTD  2817K units

YoY Total  -154K units


The trend looks to be a downards one and June could be the worst month of the year so far. June and July will no doubt be down from 2008, but August could be up once again. Then September and October could be also down, but depends on the release date of Wii Fit+. There's, unfortunately, nothing big besides Wii Fit+ until October/November, so sales could be down by 1 million or more until the Holidays. Then it's not very likely for the Wii to outperform November/December 2008. I expect Wii to end at 2 million less than 2008, at around 8 million for the year.

Soriku said: Squilliam said: The Wii is pretty much nearly as cheap to make as it will ever be. The Wii HD or whatever would probably be the same situation. Why would they keep the Wii on the market (Undersupported) which is also against their ethics as a company at a lower price. They would be better off with just maximising the sales of their higher margin next generation console. They'd keep supporting the Wii because there will still be lots of potential buyers since the Wii will have a really large library and will be cheap, just like the PS2. Not only that but for some niche devs that haven't gone HD, or don't really plan to, and can find success on the Wii just like the PS2.

Im not saying they'd not support the Wii, I was saying perhaps they would end the sale of the Wii to retail earlier in the lifespan than say the PS2. This is especially true if they want to 'disrupt' the market once again.

Avinash_Tyagi said: Squilliam said: The Wii is pretty much nearly as cheap to make as it will ever be. The Wii HD or whatever would probably be the same situation. Why would they keep the Wii on the market (Undersupported) which is also against their ethics as a company at a lower price. They would be better off with just maximising the sales of their higher margin next generation console. First off there will not be a Wii HD, the next Nintendo console will be another market disruption, as Sony and MS move into the motion control region Nintendo will just change the game one more time.   Secondly keeping the Wii on the market isn't against their philosophy, they just haven't had a system since the NES that was so dominant that it was able to remain viable after its successor came out, in addition keepin the Wii on the makrket will be cheap for them at that point, it'll be a high profit machine that they can continue to just let the market buy if it wants

The only thing absolutely certain about the next Wii is that its going to be HD. Also if they disrupt the market once again it could make the Wii absolutely obsolete and a hinderance to that disruption. The philosophy of 20 years ago doesn't apply so much today because they have a different mindset and strategy than they did back then, hence the Wii.

Soriku said: Squilliam said: Im not saying they'd not support the Wii, I was saying perhaps they would end the sale of the Wii to retail earlier in the lifespan than say the PS2. This is especially true if they want to 'disrupt' the market once again. They can disrupt the market again even with the Wii still in stock. Their next console is bound to be different than the Wii, so whether the Wii is still in stock or not doesn't matter. Having the Wii still in stock gives the incentives I listed, which in turn gives them money on top of they money they'll earn on their next console. It's a win for all, basically.

They don't really follow the price cut phillosphy, they said they wanted to wean consumers off the idea that the consoles price would come down. Also their next generation console would probably kill off sales for the Wii unless it was at a really low price.

I don't know if the Wii will last as long as the PS2 did in the USA market place, but the highest 12 month peak for Wii to date, i.e. March 2008 to February 2009 came in about 25% higher than the PS2 12 month peak in the immediate aftermath of the drop to $200 in the May 2002 to April 2003. Its something like 8.7m vs. 10.9m by NPD figures if you look them up. DS in the June 2008 to May 2009 12 month period is at 10.9m as well by NPD.

By calendar year PS2 did over 20m units in its best three year period. I'm pretty sure it was 2002 to 2004. So thats ~20 million PS2s in its peak three period in the USA (36 months). To date Wii has been on sale about 31 months in the USA...and its over 20m. Even if Wii only did 200,000/month for June to October that means it matched the PS2 peak three year period at a higher price point ($250 vs $200 for every month except for Jan-May 2002). Here is the thing though: if you compared the first full three calendar years for Wii, it should come in at least 26 million. We don't even know if 2007-2009 is the three year Wii peak yet.

Since E3 I've been expecting a Wii price cut in the USA in Spring 2010. If they do that Wii could do another 7-11m in 2010 in the USA.

Right now for Wii I'd wager this is still possible:

2006 - 1.1m

2007 - 6.2m

2008 - 10.15m

2009 ~ 10.5m (2D Mario Game Audience is enormous, enough interesting projects to maintain momentum, no Dec supply issues for once)

2010 ~ 9m ($50 to $80 price cut offset by Natal/PS3 Motion tech and ~$150-$250 360 skus, and $250 PS3)

2011 ~ 6.5m (360 down to $100-$200, Wii down to $130, PS3 down to $200)

2012 ~ 4m (PS4 or 720 launches in Nov, Wii 2 launches Nov)

2013 ~  2m (PS4 or 720 launches)

2014 ~ 800k (Nintendo stops making Wii)

 

To me, thats 50m Wiis in seven years and the launch window in 2006. For PS2 even though I have to check on some of the numbers, and I'm estimating for the end, I would say even with a longer duration on the market it probably will be beaten by Wii because the peak demand will be much higher even though it will likely be supported for a shorter amount of time. I mean even DS is ahead of PS2 pace now by over 1m, and Nintendo has not cut price on that thing. Wii is ahead of PS2 by several million without a price cut, and at a higher price point, and more importantly it has already had a higher peak.

          PS2        Wii

2000 ~ 1m /  2006 1.1m

2001 ~ 6m / 2007 6.3m

2002 ~ 8m / 2008 10.15m

2003 ~ 6m / 2009 ~ 10.5m? (8.5m to 12.5m is the realistic range I'd wager)

2004 ~ 5m / 2010 ~ 9m (7-11m realistic)

2005 ~ 5.5m / 2011 ~ 6.5m (5-8m realistic)

2006 - 4.7m / 2012 ~ 4m (2.5m to 5.5m realistic)

2007 - 3.9m / 2013 ~ 2m (1-3m realistic)

2008 - 2.5m / 2014 ~ 800k (500k-1m realistic)

2009 - 1.6m

2010 - 900k

2011 - 200k

when does top 20 come? (or 50 whatever it is)