Slashdot Mirror
7-9 Million Wiis by 2007?
Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo's production of the Wii is actually going better than expected. Analyst firm UBS is now estimating that 7-9 Million Wii units should be off the production lines by 2007. From the article: "Citing industry 'checks,' UBS analysts Alex Gauna and Steven Chin claim that Nintendo already made 2 million Wiis by the end of September. They go on to predict that, 'at least 7 million and potentially as high as 9 million more units are in the build plan for Q4 06. This production ramp handily exceeds a publicly announced target for 6 million units to ship by year's end.'"
I think it does say something that geeks are anticipating the Wii. It was MS/Sony's expectation that us geeks, being more hardcore, would welcome the PS3 or perhaps the Xbox with welcome arms due to the horsepower alone.
And then we would spread the gospel to the Muggles in turn, providing free advertising/sale's drive to their consoles.
I know enough people still anticipate those systems, but it seems the Xbox 360 reception has been lukewarm and the Wii has turn the industry on it's head by not trying to compete in the areas Sony is exceedingly strong in, but rather playing to their own strengths.
In part, I see the PS3, with its Bluray encumbered/enable device, heading somewhat in the same direction as the Nintendo Gameboy VR and Sega Saturn, of years past. It will have success, however, but right now it seems Sony has to initiate most of its own hype, the PS3 will fail to launch Blu-ray as a defacto video standard, and probably fall short of the PS2 in terms of market domination.