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Nintendo Promises 4 Million Shipped Wiis By Year-End

Posted by Zonk on Wed Nov 01, 2006 03:52 PM
from the that's-a-thick-stream dept.
Businesses Nintendo Entertainment Games
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.
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Nintendo Promises 4 Million Shipped Wiis By Year-End 25 Comments More /

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  • Amazon still doesn't have the pre-order option for the Nintendo Wii up yet. I'm not sure if I want to pre-order to do the EBay thing or wait until January to get one for myself. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
    • There is hope. No matter what EB/Gamestop has said, Wal-Mart is getting more units than any other single company, and they're not taking pre-orders.
      • Walmart took preorders on their website this morning and it sold out in 15 minutes. That's with the $600 of a console, extra remote and nunchuck, Wii points card, and four games with tax and shipping.
        • From what I heard, though, they aren't taking pre-orders in their stores. It will simply be first-come, first-served.
          • Most likely true, since this is what they did here with the 360, and a close friend of mine works there and she said that they won't do pre-orders for Wii or PS3 either.

            My local EB Games told me that they wouldn't do pre-orders either, but then I was in there the other day and they were doing it.. So. Whatever.
  • From Henry Ford:
    "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."

    Also attributed to Ford:
    "Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it."
  • They don't support online play right now, so they won't get my money. Its 2006, darn near 2007 and they want to ship a console that is single player only?

    To have a fun game of Red Steel i'm going to need to invest in 160.00 worth of controllers. That just isn't right!
    • Would you rather see a lot of games with shoddy online support or would you like Nintendo to iron out their system first and then provide developers with proper kits? Unlike Sony, Nintendo isn't a clusterfuck and wants to see a standard implementation that works across the board.

      This is probably the main reason Smash Bro's is pushed to 07...they want to iron out their network issues themselves before making other developers waste their time figuring out the quirks.
    • >> To have a fun game of Red Steel i'm going to need to invest in 160.00 worth of controllers. That just isn't right! What kind of math are you using??? You'll have to spend $50 for the game. The console comes with a controller and nun-chuk, which happens to be what you need to play Red Steel. If you want a friend to play on the same console, it is $60 for a second controller and chuk. Where the hell do you get 160??

    • hey don't support online play right now, so they won't get my money.

      Now or later, they're going to have it. Wi-Fi is already built into the system. So, it's $250 now or $250 later. I won't expect price drops for the console for 2 years, when it's possible they might release a more multi-media enabled device with DVD support in the States and Europe, like they're going to release in Japan from the get-go.

      To have a fun game of Red Steel i'm going to need to invest in 160.00 worth of controllers. That ju

  • Are the retailers going to try to stick everyone with expensive bundles, like many previous releases of new gaming systems?
    • Hopefully not. I'm not going for that bundle nonsense...usually that's just Gamestop anyway. I want 2 things: the system, and Twilight Princess. If someone tries to make me buy something else, I'll just take my business elsewhere. I think my best chance for getting one will be Target.
  • Let's say they started production in august, in order to get 4 million units by march, they are going to need to produce 500,000 units per MONTH, which would be on average of 16,000 units per DAY. That's 16,000 final, completed units. WTF? Did Nintendo manage to find Santa's elves looking for work or something?
    • UBS analysts Alex Gauna and Steven Chin claim that Nintendo already made 2 million Wiis by the end of September.

  • OMG Wiiiiiii! (Score:3, Funny)

    by snuf23 (182335) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @04:27PM (#16678801)
    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...

  • Production Concerns (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MeanderingMind (884641) on Wednesday November 01 2006, @04:45PM (#16679085) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • I was hoping for 6M by year end and 10M for spring. So much for that. Wiis might actually fetch a pretty good premium on e-bay. If demand is for 10M and there are only 2M, thats a pretty big price to pay. Unless N manages to pull a few million untis from nowhere.
    • The launch for the DS was supposed to be 2 Mil worldwide (Japan + NA) by the end of 2004, but Nintendo revised the totals in December (they dropped a bunch of money to get a 3rd factory online) and actually shipped 2.5-2.8 million. I'd expect that the 4 million number is again a conservative estimate. I wouldn't be surprised if 5-6 Million actually reach shelves by the end of 2006.

    • If they can't satisfy the demand, why don't they raise the price until the demand exactly matches the offer, and lower the price later on as production ramps up?

      Because a) finding that magic price in a largely unknown market (the "Blue Ocean" Nintendo is targeting) is not easy, and b) that'd be insanely bad PR since they've already announced a set price.

      Right now, Nintendo is riding high on community goodwill. That's likely going to be worth considerably more in the long run than an extra few bucks on

    • Just for anecdotal evidence, I asked the guy at the Walmart electronics counter how many Wiis they were getting in. He said 7. Then I asked about PS3. He said they were getting 3. Either way, it's pretty low numbers to expect to get either one at launch, although it's interesting to know that they are getting more than twice as many Wiis.
    • In my experience the best places to camp out are Sams-Club and Costco.
      • They typically get just as many units as the Best Buys and Walmarts
      • People don't typically think to camp out there
      • While they usually only open at 7am for premium members and 10am for regular member they almost always let console campers in at 7am (which confuses a lot of would-be campers)
      • They'll probably sell you a bundle but it wont be more then $50 over the price of the console and at a savings compared to the individual components
    • Remember all the people who insist on saying "fishes". Dunno if you get it happens much (or at all) in America, but here in the UK you still get older people stuck in their ways of murdering English (the language, not the people...much).

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