Thanks for pointing this. In another thread, some people are suggesting that Nintendo is shipping some Wii's to Europe for the PS3 launch (And I think so). Any idea about that?

Red: Sellthrough of inventory built up before launch. Blue: Normal shipment rate. Green: Hold back for paper mario etc?

What is the purpose? If they are able to sell all shipped Wii's there is no point to keep them for major releases. Especially when demand on the market is so high (isn't it?). I'd like to believe demand finally slowdowns but it is too early for such statements. I think steady stream of money is much better than few explosions for a quarter... Steady sale also helps other developers and there is no problem with storage, logistic etc.

I don't know if this would make a difference or not but we know that Nintendo is attempting to increase production by a pretty wide margin in April, so existing infastructure might need an upgrade which could be slowing production; a rotating upgrade on several facilities could drop production by quite a bit. I don't think it really matters much anyways 40,000 units per week is still very respectable sales in Japan ...

Do you have any proof of this (Nintendo holding stock or shipping the consoles to Europe) or this is just PR to keep nice and triumpanth the image of the Wii ? PS :You have changed your nick ,but not your sympathies .

of course there is no proof, but the sudden drop is very mysterious. To me it's pretty clear there is a supply issue at least to a certain extent. The Wii's week to week sales are strange and vary way too much. The ps3 sales are extremely predictable, and go through obvious patterns. For ps3 since launch there has been an obvious pattern of it sales slowing down at a reasonable rate until it hit 20,000. For Wii the sale are half of what they were 2 weeks ago, to me that's just strange.

You completely missed the point Diomedes. Demand has not slacked off any measurable amount. The Wii is still supply constrained everywhere. Meaning that all we can say about demand is that it is at least equal to supply. It's probably a lot more, but that can't be measured.

It's still feasible that there are Wii shortage in Japan if Nintendo is putting more effort into the US and European markets. Whatever the situation in Japan is by all accounts they're worse in the US and Europe. Shortages everywhere, and I don't think it will be solved for at least a few more months. In Japan you might have a shot to find a Wii, in the other two if you're not at exactly the right place at the right time you're out of luck.