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1 Million Wii Units At Launch

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-than-average-chance dept.

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.

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  1. Number of Wiis per store by Gamingboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.