@ioi
Great analysis! I can see your point of view being true. Now there's also Tales of Graces launched in December, it's another good reason to Japanese people for buying a Wii.

I find it funny that people are still saying PS3 even after ioi already weighed in on the thread, and pointed out in detail why its nearly impossible.

When has facts and logic ever stopped anyone here?

touche

Tales of Graces comes this year in Japan? nice if ToV can more hardware this game sure will... hmm have there been any high profile games like ToG type released on the Wii yet?

As i said before, it will be an interesting battle.

My points on Wii:

1) Wii is getting at saturation point in Japan, since it doesn`t have support with big japanese 3rd party titles. Monster Hunter 3tri was more like exception.
2) The Wii already was affordable, and 50k yen pricecut shouldn`t help that much. I expect Wii sales around 50-70k that week, realistic maximum.
3) Wii Fit plus, just like Wii sport resort, which had no effect on sales.
4) Yeah, New SMB will have effect on sales, just like FFXIII will. But you never know, which one will have bigger effect.
5) There was already Tales game on Wii and FF spinoff probably will sell same as Tekken 6.

My point on PS3:

1) PS3 got slim version + 29,9k price, ps3 became now affordable.
2) First really big game on PS3 - FFXIII. Wii already had SMG, SSBB, MK and other.
3) PS3 is getting more JRPG games lately.
4) PS3 has enough games which rivals Wii lineup in Japan this year.
5) And if both consoles won`t reach their goals till March, PS3 will have support from GT5.

@ioi:

Some good points, of course, especially with regards to which titles will push hardware, but some things I don't really get:

1) How does Wii being non-supply constrained last year result in higher sales this year? Shouldn't it be the other way around? If they had been short last year you could say that the drop in sales was artificial and that the Wii demand in Japan was actually higher than it looks. But that wasn't the case. It dropped something like 40% over supply-constrained (and therefore artificially low) Holiday 2007. This strikes me as a serious slowdown in momentum.

Do you mean that the lower post-holiday sales this year is an artificial drop because 2008's post-holiday sales were artificially high due to the supply problem for Christmas 2007? Because that would potentially make sense to me.

I don't mean to be difficult about this, I'm just trying to figure out what you're suggesting. On the surface of it, it sounds like you're arguing against a stronger Wii holiday because it comes across as, "Wii sales were down last year and that is an accurate indication of the demand trend." See why this is confusing?

2) Is 2 million new Wii owners based on SMB really conceivable when they only sold 1.1 million hardware units over Sept to March period last year? These are people who will buy the hardware for that game but rejected not only SMG but Nintendo's entire Wii lineup to date including everything from Brawl to Zelda? If they can push 2 million new users, then yeah, that decides it.

I'm still not really sure on the 5 mi / 10 mil race, but in terms of a yoy holiday increase I went into this just assuming that it was going to be less likely in Japan than anywhere else. The things I saw were:
1) Serious momentum deterioration in the Japanese charts but not elsewhere,
2) first holiday season with a serious competitor in Japan,
3) FFXIII releases in Japan but nowhere else.

But I may have underestimated the 2D Mario effect, it seems...

Ps3. The gates are open for ginormous sales

Yes it has it's coming 15th November in USA and 20th November in UK.

1) You wrote:

"Of course Wii will have a much stronger year this year than last in Japan. [my italics]

1. Wii's weren't particularly hard to find last year in Japan, unlike the US and Europe - they were selling based purely on demand rather than artifically lower due to shortages."

And this in a thread about hardware milestones specific to Japan.  It made no sense to me because you  seemed to be implying that unconstrained sales last year (in Japan) would translate to higher sales this year (in Japan).  If you look back on what you wrote, doesn't point 1 suggest that last year's (declined) sales in Japan are representative of demand -- and that demand showed a decline?  I don't dispute that Wii will have a better holiday worldwide 2009 vs 2008, but that's not what this thread is about and it's not what you said.

2)  You said "New SMB Wii certainly won't be selling just to Galaxy buyers in Japan - it could bring in a potential ~2m new buyers."  Again, in a thread about hardware milestones, I hope you can see the ambiguity.  At the very least you should explain how you think this will translate to hardware sales.

I said I seemed to be underestimating the effect of SMB because I respect your prediction abilities and I thought you were talking about its effect on hardware sales in this thread about hardwale sales.  You weren't.   As it turns out I may not be underestimating SMB after all because I expect it to have massive software sales but mostly to Nintendo fans who I think (especially in Japan) bought their Wii's a long time ago.

I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I think you started writing and just kind of lost track of the point you were trying to make and digressed into talking about worldwide sales and software sales.  Your points make a lot more sense in that context.