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.dmc · Jan 16, 2007

Haven't bothered following these threads too closely, but has anyone mentioned the fact that at one point Nintendo retracted a PR statement so that they could get rid of a reference to definite numbers. Perhaps they really just didn't ship that many..

Articles for reference..

Nintendo Retracts 1 Million Shipment Claim
The Nintendo Wii could be the latest new console launch to fall foul of lower stock problems, despite an earlier promise that the console would be relatively freely available in the U.S.

Although Nintendo has not categorically stated a change in shipment plans, the company did retract a small part of an earlier press release which indicated that 600,000 Wii consoles had been sold in the Americas in just eight days.

This figure itself is not in dispute, but rather a sentence towards the end of the press release that indicated, "Despite spot shortages in some locations, well more than a million Wii systems will be available in the United States by the end of the year."

An update to the press release has been released indicating that the sentence should be disregarded. No further information was provided as to why the information was no longer accurate, but the obvious conclusion is that Nintendo is no longer confident of being able to ship that many units this year.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12057
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14695

Pud · Jan 16, 2007

Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
Either the Wii didn't sell as the internet would have you believe or Nintendo didn't ship as many units as they claim, possibly both. Some of you can't come to terms with this and it is downright silly.

Your storied posting history should suggest to you that posting a statement like that in a Wii thread would be silly enough, shouldn't it?

Clearly Nintendo didn't ship all 4 mill by the end of the year, but they'll all likely be sold in the retail chain by Reggie's estimate. The demand is still as high as ever, in case you'd like to correct your silliness.

If I were to take a guess as to why all 4 million weren't shipped by the end of last year, I'd go for the wrist strap replacement thing. There were likely a whole bunch of systems boxed up and ready to go before they had to individually unwrap and replace a lot of straps, to avoid a lawsuit. The system itself isn't rocket science to produce (like the PS3s, which sit anecdotally on shelves nowadays) so I doubt it's production capacity.

johnsmith · Jan 16, 2007

Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
Either the Wii didn't sell as the internet would have you believe or Nintendo didn't ship as many units as they claim, possibly both. Some of you can't come to terms with this and it is downright silly.

Both? No. Only the latter is possible. This thing was sold out EVERYWHERE. Still is.

GhaleonEB · Jan 16, 2007

.dmc said:
Haven't bothered following these threads too closely, but has anyone mentioned the fact that at one point Nintendo retracted a PR statement so that they could get rid of a reference to definite numbers. Perhaps they really just didn't ship that many..

Articles for reference..

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12057
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14695

I remember that. The retraction was the entire basis for my predicting 700k in the NPD prediction thread. I was suprised more people didn't interpret it the same way.

Dr. Kitty Muffins · Jan 16, 2007

Pud said:
Your storied posting history should suggest to you that posting a statement like that in a Wii thread would be silly enough, shouldn't it?

Yes, "storied" as if I'm some famous troll or something. Good one, asshole.

Pud · Jan 16, 2007

Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
Yes, "storied" as if I'm some famous troll or something. Good one, asshole.

Asshole? Nice personal touch, there. Look what I found!

BlueTsunami · Jan 16, 2007

I heard a rumor that the "lost wiis" that are not being accounted for are actually in space and are about to circle the moon. The same scenario as Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks...lets hope they make it...for America!

Dr. Kitty Muffins · Jan 16, 2007

Pud said:
Asshole? Nice personal touch, there. Look what I found!

Yes, making a point twice in very similar thread topics is "trolling". <rollseyes>

If you want make accusations about my year long posting history here at GAF , you better have better "proof" than that . If I had trolled in the past, I would have been banned for it long ago.

Avalon · Jan 16, 2007

Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
Either the Wii didn't sell as the internet would have you believe or Nintendo didn't ship as many units as they claim, possibly both. Some of you can't come to terms with this and it is downright silly.

I think this is the case.

I was at Gamestop earlier and in the 15 minutes I was there they received four phone calls all asking about the Wii's availability.

Dr. Kitty Muffins · Jan 16, 2007

Avalon said:
I think this is the case.

I was at Gamestop earlier and in the 15 minutes I was there they received four phone calls all asking about the Wii's availability.

I wonder what the hold up is if indeed it is a shipping matter. I haven 't heard of any port issues in the news. Asia is fairly stable right now. Unless they are actually manufactured in North Korea (lol), there shouldn't be any port issues. Perhaps the Wii is lost at sea! j/k

They had no problem shipping the DS.

JoshuaJSlone · Jan 16, 2007

GameSpot by way of Ghaleon EB said:
Speaking with Reuters, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that he expects 1 million Wiis in the region by early December and 2 million by the second week of January.

Just to do some estimating... let's say by "early December" he means what would be 1 week into the 5 tracked weeks of NPD December, and by the second week of January we'll say two weeks into the NPD January. Let's also say 90% of North America hardware is going to the US. Between the 1 million and the 2 million figures is a period of 6 weeks, with average shipments of 167K each week. That should bring things up to 1.67M shipped by the end of December, for 1.5M in the US. I'll even be generous and say 100K were moving in trucks across the US, which along with the NPD numbers would bring the US shipped number to 1.2M. Whether to interpret this as "300K behind schedule in NA" or "20% behind schedule in NA" as far as guessing how close they are to that mid-January goal, *shrug*.

Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
They had no problem shipping the DS.

Based on? They'd been shipping the DS much longer, so there was more chance to stockpile. Even so, there were reports of DS shortages in December.

Square2005 · Jan 16, 2007

Avalon said:
I think this is the case.

I was at Gamestop earlier and in the 15 minutes I was there they received four phone calls all asking about the Wii's availability.

>_< Gamecube all over again for the U.S....

Jewbacca · Jan 16, 2007

Why cant we find out what major retailers that NPD tracks?

Avalon · Jan 16, 2007

Dr. Kitty Muffins said:
I wonder what the hold up is if indeed it is a shipping matter. I haven 't heard of any port issues in the news. Asia is fairly stable right now. Unless they are actually manufactured in North Korea (lol), there shouldn't be any port issues. Perhaps the Wii is lost at sea! j/k

I don't get it either. The Wii should be readily available. I don't like to play this card, but they certainly aren't producing anything like the PS3 or 360.

Square2005 said:
>_< Gamecube all over again for the U.S....

Care to explain?

mj1108 · Jan 16, 2007

Square2005 said:
>_< Gamecube all over again for the U.S....

Not really since people want the Wii.

Pud · Jan 16, 2007

mj1108 said:
Not really since people want the Wii.

Your sarcasm meter must be broken.

I don't get it either. The Wii should be readily available. I don't like to play this card, but they certainly aren't producing anything like the PS3 or 360.

Err... worlwide launch.

JoshuaJSlone · Jan 16, 2007

Pud said:
Your sarcasm meter must be broken.

No, Square2005 means it seriously. GameCube plummeted down to under 100K for January and February of 2002. Even if you want to talk about relative unpopularity of GameCube, for a new system in its third month to suddenly plummet and do half-Xbox numbers for its third and fourth seems like a supply thing. I mean, GameCube did better January 2006 than January 2002. Square is totally worried about an early low supply repeat dooming Wii in North America.

GhaleonEB · Jan 16, 2007

Pud said:
Err... worlwide launch.

A lot of people seem to miss that. Let's say Nintendo undershipped by a full million units, and hit 3m WW this calendar year. That's twice what Microsoft shipped in the same timeframe (and also a WW launch). The comparisons to the 360 only apply in that there is demand, and there are shortages. Nintendo put out a lot of units.

radjago · Jan 16, 2007

donny2112 said:
Example: I don't believe TRU is directly tracked by NPD. In that case, it wouldn't make sense to assume that the 360 sells the same percentage there (not exactly a kid-friendly console) as the PS2 (massive amounts of kid-friendly games).

IIRC, TRU received one of the highest allotments of the Wii at launch, at up to 25% of North American consoles, and they were pushing it pretty hard in their holiday advertising and catalogs.

Jewbacca said:
Why cant we find out what major retailers that NPD tracks?

Good question.

Fuzzy · Jan 16, 2007

Jewbacca said:
Why cant we find out what major retailers that NPD tracks?

I'm pretty sure sonycowboy has posted it in the past.

Haunted · Jan 16, 2007

GhaleonEB said:
A lot of people seem to miss that. Let's say Nintendo undershipped by a full million units, and hit 3m WW this calendar year. That's twice what Microsoft shipped in the same timeframe (and also a WW launch). The comparisons to the 360 only apply in that there is demand, and there are shortages. Nintendo put out a lot of units.

agreed.

If Nintendo had anounnced that they would ship a million in the US and 3 Million WW until the end of the year, everybody here would (rightly) congratulate Nintendo on a job well done without any reservations. The thing is: they announced roughly a million more units shipped, so they themselves set the expectations for the numbers too high. They still have the most impressive numbers and the best launch (again, numbers) - but this 'disappointment' (almost too strong a word) some posters on GAF here show is a result of their own announcements.

edit: oh, and Mythos Yggdrasil: the man's name is Pachter, not Patcher, goddamnit!

Pimpwerx · Jan 16, 2007

Donnie said:
NPD track 60% of sales and estimate the rest. you might want to get some basic facts before laughing at anyone else

WTF? I always thought they covered 80%. 60%? 40% extrapolation of anything outside of astronomical figures qualifies as a guess IMO. I really have to wonder why and how NPD and MC and others became the bog standard for the flamewars when the numbers are still so incomplete. I know it's a well-thought-out formula they use, but it's still a bit of a crapshoot. 60%??? Are you serious? I don't know if I like that at all. PEACE.

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