I don't think they will do it this year, because they have to please their shareholders...

Let's imagine the Wii production costs are $180: is it better to sell 10 million Wii's at $250 (benefits: 700 millions dollars), or 15 million Wii's at $200 (benefits: 300 millions dollars)?

I think the answer is quite simple: quantity isn't everything...

As many of you stated, the YoY sales are low due to a weaker line-up compared to the huge Mario Kart-Smash Bros-Wii Fit combination in early 2008...

But the demand in the holiday season will be just as strong as in 2008: the Wii will remain one of the hottest gift out there, and may be sold-out once again, so... Nintendo will wait...

But after the holiday season, the situation will be very different, and then i think they will move, and give the Wii an additional boost at $200...

Maybe they will ship their fiscal year estimations by march 2010, but with a maximum profitability in 2009, plus the boost in early 2010... does it make sense?

Nintendo can afford a price cut to $199 and still make a small profit but it's weather Nintendo feels the need to. They may simply lower their fore-casted sales based on the recent decline. After all, Nintendo is unconcerned with market share or 'console wars' and wants only one thing - profit. To them it may be that profit is going to be good enough that a price cut can wait till 2010.

Nintendo can always afford to make a price cut but yet they dont because their products are still high in demand. As long as Nintendo are selling at a good rate they wouldnt need to.

The Nintendo DS Lite had a small price cut and its still selling like hot cakes so i wouldnt be surprised if the next price cut will have the Wii at $229.99

I really can't see a reason at the moment for a Wii price cut. It's still outselling the PS360 consoles added together just about every month in every territory. And correct me if I'm wrong but having a console sell at the launch price two and a half years later has to be a record..?

I can only see them reducing the price if both Sony and Microsoft cut the prices of the PS3 and 360.

It doesn't matter if Wii's are still making profit, what matters now is what explanation will they hand out to shareholders for their overprojection of Wii sales. If they lower their forecast too much then shares will be sold and Nintendo will lose a lot of money. If they announce a price cut it will have to be an immediate one, if not sales will die until the price is cut.

Nintendo is on pace to sell 16 - 18 million units this year, nothing similar to the 26 million they projected. And I can't see a pricecut happening this year either unless it happens very soon. Nintendo relies too much on 2-3 games/year and that's suicidal, because if they don't spur the interest they expected (like AC:CF, Punch Out or Wii Music) then sales take a deep hit. On Top of that WF+ and WSR are sequels, and will sell mostly to existing owners.

you also have to consider that nintendo might still be pumping out consoles at full compasity and stock-piling the ones that don't need to be on shelves (since theres already some wii's on those shelves) and hopefully meet demand for christmas.

there will but boat-loads more wii's available for the shopping season this year than last, plus, like others said, a few big releases will help.

trestres said: It doesn't matter if Wii's are still making profit, what matters now is what explanation will they hand out to shareholders for their overprojection of Wii sales. If they lower their forecast too much then shares will be sold and Nintendo will lose a lot of money. If they announce a price cut it will have to be an immediate one, if not sales will die until the price is cut. Nintendo is on pace to sell 16 - 18 million units this year, nothing similar to the 26 million they projected. And I can't see a pricecut happening this year either unless it happens very soon. Nintendo relies too much on 2-3 games/year and that's suicidal, because if they don't spur the interest they expected (like AC:CF, Punch Out or Wii Music) then sales take a deep hit. On Top of that WF+ and WSR are sequels, and will sell mostly to existing owners.

First off, share price is meaningless to companies beyond how it translates into investor confidence; and being that the majority of Nintendo’s shares are held by one family in Japan who is entirely behind the direction of Satoru Iwata the share price of Nintendo’s stock isn’t even a consideration for Nintendo.

Beyond that Nintendo has sold over 8 Million units in the first 6 months of the year, and in a typical holiday season a console manufacturer can achieve 40% to 60% of their total yearly sales in the last 3 months of the year; and this means that, depending on holiday sales, Nintendo could still achieve sales between 20 and 30 Million units.

Now, there is nothing saying that Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort are only limited to selling to existing customers ...

An element of the Wii's success that so few people seem to pay attention to is how when someone buys a system then end up having people over to play the games they own and some of those people enjoyed it so much they bought a system for themself. The Wii's unprecidented success as a social gaming platform has translated into it being far more viral than any previous console. It is very possible that Wii Sports Resort could become another social gaming monster, and people who were not that impressed by Wii Sports Tennis might be very interested in Table Tennis, and those that were not that impressed by Wii Sports Boxing might be very impressed by Sword Fighting.

Wii Fit continues to be the most dominant game released this generation and if it wasn't for Wii Fit Plus it would be on track to be the highest selling game in (at least) 20 years. When you factor in that Wii Fit has seen sales (roughly) in the range of Call of Duty 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4 combined, I think the attention its sequel will bring to the platform could easily increase sales by quite a bit.

It would be great timing to get a boost in sales with a holiday price cut this year.

@HappySqurriel: Do your research before writing that much. Fiscal Year is what comes out in every report, not calendar year, so Nintendo hasn't sold 8 million units, but 2.7 million during the first quarter that goes from April to June 2009. They expect 26 million consoles sold between March 09 and March 2010.

2.7 million during the first three months. If we count July then it's 3.5 million in 4 months, which means Nintendo will have to sell 22.5 million more consoles in 8 months. This means 2.82 million consoles sold on average every month for the next 8 months.

There's many wrong things with expecting this: Firstly, the Wii is selling about 0.8 million consoles/month going by VGChartz numbers. With August and September being slow months, we can easily expect the Wii to be flat or down from July. Say Wii rises a bit because of WSR and MH3 during September and October (Remember WSR had almost no effect in Wii sales in Japan), even though September is a very slow time, then we can say Wii might sell 1 million consoles/month during these 2 months, putting the Wii at 5.5 million after 6 months.

Now there are 6 months to go and 20.5 million consoles that need to be sold during that time. That gives us 3.41 million/month. In 2008 the Wii saw sales of 3.5 million consoles/month during Q4. This year, with sales in a downwards trend, it will be difficult for it to reach those figures for those 3 months.

Basically there will have to be 20.5 million Wii consoles sold in between October 2009 and March 2010. Q4 has WF+ and NSMBWii. WF+ will not generate that much more interest than what Wii Fit is already generating, since it's the same game with some added activities, so I don't think people will all of a sudden go crazy over a game that has been available for more than 18 months. NSMBWii is the only game I think will be capable of moving HW, but it won't be that big of a boost. Mario is already an established franchise on the Wii, and with multiple million selling games, one has to wonder how many more people are eager to buy a Wii just for this game. I don't think it will be as popular as the DS one, so you can't say there are at least 10 million people who will buy a Wii for NSMBWii because the first NSMB was on DS and almost 20 million people got it.

Those 2 games on their own will have to move 3.5 million Wii consoles/month for 6 months. You think that's plausible? There are no big third party games outside MH3, which will only matter in Japan. There's no Assassin's Creed, CoD, Bioshock or Left 4 Dead sized kind of game coming out for the Wii. Tales of Graces, FFCC:CB will sell well, but never like those games. Rock Band and GH5 are multiplatform games, so they won't have much effect. And there are a lot of big games coming out for both the 360 and PS3 during the last quarter, meaning the Wii will have some very big games to compete against.

Wii will probably end at 16 - 18 million sold at the end of March 2010. If there's a price cut, then 18 - 20 million, because I don't think they will cut the price before November, so the impact will be smaller.

Share prices determine the value of a company. If Nintendo needs money they can sell shares of the company. If these shares get devaluated a lot, then the amount of money they can get will be limited, and investors won't want to buy them anyways. Share prices matter a lot, that's why they exist, otherwise they wouldn't be doing roundtables after each report is out.

trestres said: @HappySqurriel: Do your research before writing that much. Fiscal Year is what comes out in every report, not calendar year, so Nintendo hasn't sold 8 million units, but 2.7 million during the first quarter that goes from April to June 2009. They expect 26 million consoles sold between March 09 and March 2010. 2.7 million during the first three months. If we count July then it's 3.5 million in 4 months, which means Nintendo will have to sell 22.5 million more consoles in 8 months. This means 2.82 million consoles sold on average every month for the next 8 months. There's many wrong things with expecting this: Firstly, the Wii is selling about 0.8 million consoles/month going by VGChartz numbers. With August and September being slow months, we can easily expect the Wii to be flat or down from July. Say Wii rises a bit because of WSR and MH3 during September and October (Remember WSR had almost no effect in Wii sales in Japan), even though September is a very slow time, then we can say Wii might sell 1 million consoles/month during these 2 months, putting the Wii at 5.5 million after 6 months. Now there are 6 months to go and 20.5 million consoles that need to be sold during that time. That gives us 3.41 million/month. In 2008 the Wii saw sales of 3.5 million consoles/month during Q4. This year, with sales in a downwards trend, it will be difficult for it to reach those figures for those 3 months. Basically there will have to be 20.5 million Wii consoles sold in between October 2009 and March 2010. Q4 has WF+ and NSMBWii. WF+ will not generate that much more interest than what Wii Fit is already generating, since it's the same game with some added activities, so I don't think people will all of a sudden go crazy over a game that has been available for more than 18 months. NSMBWii is the only game I think will be capable of moving HW, but it won't be that big of a boost. Mario is already an established franchise on the Wii, and with multiple million selling games, one has to wonder how many more people are eager to buy a Wii just for this game. I don't think it will be as popular as the DS one, so you can't say there are at least 10 million people who will buy a Wii for NSMBWii because the first NSMB was on DS and almost 20 million people got it. Those 2 games on their own will have to move 3.5 million Wii consoles/month for 6 months. You think that's plausible? There are no big third party games outside MH3, which will only matter in Japan. There's no Assassin's Creed, CoD, Bioshock or Left 4 Dead sized kind of game coming out for the Wii. Tales of Graces, FFCC:CB will sell well, but never like those games. Rock Band and GH5 are multiplatform games, so they won't have much effect. And there are a lot of big games coming out for both the 360 and PS3 during the last quarter, meaning the Wii will have some very big games to compete against. Wii will probably end at 16 - 18 million sold at the end of March 2010. If there's a price cut, then 18 - 20 million, because I don't think they will cut the price before November, so the impact will be smaller. Share prices determine the value of a company. If Nintendo needs money they can sell shares of the company. If these shares get devaluated a lot, then the amount of money they can get will be limited, and investors won't want to buy them anyways. Share prices matter a lot, that's why they exist, otherwise they wouldn't be doing roundtables after each report is out.

First off, I understand the fiscal year Nintendo but the shorter term you're looking at sales for the more unreliable your predictions are going to be ...

Beyond that, we can argue endlessly over how "big" of an impact certain games will have, but I do always find it interesting that every game released on the Wii can't move hardware because it is a sequel to a game that has already been released and yet no one makes those claims when it comes to Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2, Halo ODST, and (pretty much) any other sequel released to the HD consoles.

"Nintendo" doesn't (really) hold many shares in the company, and if they need money they would tap into the unusually large cash reserves they have as a company. Now, you might see a short term dip in Nintendo's share price following a change in their fiscal forecast for hardware units sold as short term traders sell their shares or short the company; but long term investers are still going to be very pleased with Nintendo's performance because they will probably still be very close to their profit projections for the year. Anyways ... regardless of the number of ways I point out how Nintendo is in a very unusual position for a company their size that they can make decisions based on a longer term horizon because short term share price changes are meaningless to them, I think you will just ignore them and treat Nintendo like a heavily indebted start-up.