If they can keep the 300-400K sales level after the holidays going into March, they'll make it

You have to figure the 14.25m they expect to ship from Oct to March is based on December primarily. The shipment plan, after seeing the April-September results (5.75m shipped) was probably something like this:

Oct ~ 1.25m (price cut month one - previous months were ~800k-900k)

Nov ~ 3m (NSMB Wii, Black Friday/Retailer promotions to clear out stock build up)

Dec ~ 6.5m (3.3m Shipped Americas, 2.4m Shipped Others, 800k Shipped Japan)

Jan ~ 1.5m (Peak season in Japan)

Feb ~ 1.0m

Mar ~ 1.0m (Next big set of titles arrive)

And to think, at the beginning of this year people mocked anyone who dared suggest it'd sell below 70 million by the end of 2009 (even below 75 million).

@ Mummelmann
May I take a look at your Wii predictions in your signature? Oh, over 70 million at the end of 2009 ;).

I hope Nintendo is under real pressure now. They are forced to do something which will hopefully result in more software, more bundles, more colors etc.

lol. If they're already at 18-19m, they'll channel stuff just to hit their targets. Nintendo doesn't usually do those sorts of things (unlike Microsoft "1st to 10 million" or "production shipments" SCE) since they got burned so bad on overshipping GameCube in 2004, but I think they'll do it now just to save face with investors. 1-2m is like nothing for shipments.

I can see Wii missing the 20m target, but it will come close nevertheless. 18m at the very least.

its too close to call now

I made those in December last year. 360 and PS3 will be pretty darn close, I did expect a price cut for both in 2009 and subsequently increased sales but I have to admit that I seriously overestimated the Wii this year, as did almost everyone else. And my Wii 2009 prediction was on the rather conservative side when I made it! DS numbers will be near acceptable and PSP is quite a bit off. I'm quite pleased all in all though, my 2008 predictions were rather laughable!

If Nintendo is off target, it will probably be by less than 1m units, which is not enough to set off any alarms.

If that's the case, they may just end up shipping out inventory to match projections anyway, leading to slight overstock at many retail outlets. But again, not enough to cause any big fire sales; maybe just enough to slightly shorten Q1 shipments.

"only" 19 million.... heheh Sony or MS would be extremely happy to "only" sell that many consoles.