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Nintendo Promises 4 Million Shipped Wiis By Year-End
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime wants to share some good news and some bad news. The good news is that by the end of the year Nintendo expects to ship 4 million consoles. The bad news is, they still expect to sell out. From the article: "Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime hyped up the console launch, saying, 'Because of demand, we're urging shoppers not to get complacent. The level of demand we're seeing goes beyond the ordinary. Retailers are telling us a significant fraction of customers pre-ordering Wii are nontraditional gamers...' The company expects to ship 6 million Wii units globally by the end of March 2007, on par with Sony's worldwide shipment targets for PS3. Microsoft has sold 6 million Xbox 360 units to date since its launch in late November 2005, and hopes to sell 10 million by the end of the calendar year." So, fewer units than the analysts wanted. Still an impressive number.
There was this guy and he went to the store and he said Wiii!
And the guy at the counter said pre-orders sold out Wiiii!
Yo, and then a kid wanted one for Christmas and he told Santa Wiiii!
And Nintendo was like OMG 4 million Wiiii!
Mario jumped up and said "No launch title for me! Wiii!"
When you're a kid and you wanna go "Wii".
But you ain't got a preorder yet!
You hold on for your life,
Hold on to your little nunchuka... in strife...
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Nintendo: 2 million at launch, 4 million by year's end, 6 million before March.
Sony: 480k at launch, 2 million by year's end, 6 million before March.
Looking at these production plans, I can't help but wonder what Sony is planning on doing to make up a gap of 4 million consoles in 2 months. Unless they are sitting on PS3s to create artificial scarcity (which I doubt), they'll need to go from producing 750k consoles a month [(2 million - 480k) / 2] to 2 million consoles a month [(6 million - 2 million ) / 2]. That's more than double their previous production.
I'm not saying its impossible, but the potential problems and roadblocks for such a plan are numerous and potentially crippling.
Nintendo seems far more organized in their rollout. I would hope they'd try and ramp up production to get more Wii consoles out there. However, I can see why they might stick to what numbers they have and possibly exceed them, rather than up forecasts and then fall short.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I'll just order it from Lik....oh wait, never mind.