Wii sold 4.5m YTD in U.S. Using NPD totals through November, that puts it at 1-1.2m depending on which numbers from the PR you use. Little bit of a question with mixing internal Nintendo numbers with NPD, but should be close to final NPD numbers. Regardless, Wii totally bombed in December in U.S. (compared to historical expectations from itself and PS2's gradual decline).
See the below graph of PS2/Wii December NPD totals in the U.S. You can see that Wii was held back initially by shortages before exploding in December 2009 in its first Christmas with 1) price drop and 2) (most importantly) availability.
However instead of trailing off gradually as PS2 did, it is nosediving. Yes, a lot of this is due to lack of games from Nintendo/third-parties, but I think it is much more to do with Nintendo foolishly keeping the Wii price in the U.S. too high for too long. It's first price drop was to $200 in September 2009, and then in December 2009 (4th December for Wii), Wal-Mart sold Wiis @ $200 with a $50 Gift Card for the entire month essentially bringing the price to $150 for the hottest/hardest to get Christmas item three years running. Wal-Mart + Christmas = major sales. Again, availability was still probably the more driving factor for sales in December 2009, though.
December 2010 (5th December for Wii) was the second Christmas @ $200. Very substantial decline due to comparing to December 2009, but still a very good absolute total. Note: PS2's shortage in its 5th December was due to the transition to the PSTwo/Slim model. Near complete sellouts that Christmas, which pushed a lot of sales into January-March, as PS2 was ~500K up YOY in Jan-Mar 2005 compared to Jan-Mar 2004.
Now we get to this Christmas (6th December for Wii), and we see a ridiculous dropoff for the system. ~55% YOY drop for Wii in December. And it's not that the system can't sell. Nintendo sold ~ as many Wii's this Black Friday as they did the previous Black Friday. So what happened?
$99 Wii happened. What does this tell us? The $150 market for Wii is essentially dried up, but there's still a fairly hungry market for the system @ $99. Why isn't the Wii already @ $99? Nintendo. They rode the sellout wave for 2.5 years, and so were late, and continue to be late, in dropping the price of the system.
Nintendo used to be much more about the budget-minded consumer. Recognizing the stagnant state of GameCube, they dropped it to $99 in its third Christmas with an extensive Player's Choice line. Obviously success went to Nintendo's head this generation with pricing on the console side, but hopefully the performance of Wii in its later years and the 3DS pricing debacle will lead to a better plan with Wii U.
See the below graph of PS2/Wii December NPD totals in the U.S. You can see that Wii was held back initially by shortages before exploding in December 2009 in its first Christmas with 1) price drop and 2) (most importantly) availability.
However instead of trailing off gradually as PS2 did, it is nosediving. Yes, a lot of this is due to lack of games from Nintendo/third-parties, but I think it is much more to do with Nintendo foolishly keeping the Wii price in the U.S. too high for too long. It's first price drop was to $200 in September 2009, and then in December 2009 (4th December for Wii), Wal-Mart sold Wiis @ $200 with a $50 Gift Card for the entire month essentially bringing the price to $150 for the hottest/hardest to get Christmas item three years running. Wal-Mart + Christmas = major sales. Again, availability was still probably the more driving factor for sales in December 2009, though.
December 2010 (5th December for Wii) was the second Christmas @ $200. Very substantial decline due to comparing to December 2009, but still a very good absolute total. Note: PS2's shortage in its 5th December was due to the transition to the PSTwo/Slim model. Near complete sellouts that Christmas, which pushed a lot of sales into January-March, as PS2 was ~500K up YOY in Jan-Mar 2005 compared to Jan-Mar 2004.
Now we get to this Christmas (6th December for Wii), and we see a ridiculous dropoff for the system. ~55% YOY drop for Wii in December. And it's not that the system can't sell. Nintendo sold ~ as many Wii's this Black Friday as they did the previous Black Friday. So what happened?
$99 Wii happened. What does this tell us? The $150 market for Wii is essentially dried up, but there's still a fairly hungry market for the system @ $99. Why isn't the Wii already @ $99? Nintendo. They rode the sellout wave for 2.5 years, and so were late, and continue to be late, in dropping the price of the system.
On the software side, it took them forever to introduce a Player's Choice lineup to drop the price on their first-party games, too. Nintendo is just way late with price drops in general this generation on the console side.
Nintendo used to be much more about the budget-minded consumer. Recognizing the stagnant state of GameCube, they dropped it to $99 in its third Christmas with an extensive Player's Choice line. Obviously success went to Nintendo's head this generation with pricing on the console side, but hopefully the performance of Wii in its later years and the 3DS pricing debacle will lead to a better plan with Wii U.
