Slashdot Mirror
1 Million Wii Units At Launch
Ars Technica is reporting on Nintendo's announcement that there will be 1 Million Wii units available at launch in the United States. Not only is that an impressive number of units, it's twice what the 360 launched with, and more than twice what Sony will be offering when it launches in the same month. From the article: "If Nintendo sells that many systems on the first day, and they turn a profit on every system sold, Nintendo is going to have some very rosy financials heading into the holiday season. If they're making money on systems as well as games, and gamers embrace the virtual console, this may be one of the most successful launches in gaming history. We'll see if they are able to deliver the numbers they're talking about here; a launch that large would be a major coup for Nintendo, and would give them a running start towards getting their systems into the homes of as many customers as possible." So, despite some disappointment at the later-than-hoped-for launch date, it looks like Nintendo is making good use of its time.
I just hope EB and other game stores will start taking preorders based on how many they expect to get soon. Hopefully one or two per customer.
Ryan Fenton
Considering Nintendo is trying to be the most innovative, it's surprising that they're the only ones sticking to the classic business strategies to actually make money off of a product and to actually make an effort to meet demand.
"Considering Nintendo is trying to be the most innovative, it's surprising that they're the only ones sticking to the classic business strategies to actually make money off of a product and to actually make an effort to meet demand."
It also has a lot to do with the hardware - the Wii is an incredibly similar system to the Gamecube architecture-wise. The components are also cheaper and easier to produce.
1 Million units in North America for launch says Rob Bertram, Nintendo of Canada's Vice President
The third most important thing I have learned in life: Squeeze anything hard enough and it eventually makes a noise.
if their profit was so huge they wouldn't risk their market by princing the pack at $250/250
If they think 1 million Wiis will sell out at launch at a $250 pricepoint, they'd be fools to make the launch price lower than that, regardless of how large their profit margin is.
If demand starts to wane after a while, they can reduce the price to $200 and still make a profit on every unit. Until then, they've just made at least $50 million off the early adopters that they otherwise wouldn't have.
I decided to do some math to determine how many Wiis there would be per store if every store in North America that I could find store figures for got the same amount of wiis.
So here's the math:
4,500 Gamestop/EB Games (some outside of North America)
3,256 Wal-Marts (USA stats only)
90 Rhino Video Games
786 Best Buys (US and Canada)
118 Future Shops (Canada)
32 Fry's Electronics (US)
635 Circuit Cities (US)
1447 Targets (US)
700 Toys 'r' Us (US stats only)
1 Nintendo World (New York City)
To come out with 11,565 possible Launch stores in North America. Of course, this doesn't include smaller chains and family owned businesses, but the results that will come from 1,000,000/11565 should give us a rough estimate on how many Wii's will be available at Launch in most stores.
It comes out at about 86 Wiis per store if we were to only include those chains. Of course, there will not be 86 wiis available at your local Wal-Mart in Hicksville, USA (or Canada), but it's nice to know that, if Wii distribution were communist, every major store would have 86 of them.