Wii Outsells 360, PS3 Worldwide

Wowzer writes "Despite confusing consoles produced, shipped or sold reports, the Nintendo Wii is now the best-selling system worldwide. Its sales exceed that of the Xbox 360 despite Microsoft's console having a year-long head start. And it's way ahead of the PS3. From the article: 'Sales figures from each console's launch date through the end of July (and the end of August in Japan) were added up, with the Wii just barely edging out the 360: 9 million for the Wii, 8.9 million for the 360, and 3.7 million for the PlayStation 3.'"

Re:I guess that means they're actuall making them

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo - Mod that man up!

Nintendo's distribution scheme isn't quite in sync with actual usage, leaving some areas to scrounge for every Wii they can get while others don't know what to do with them all. Case in point - I've been hunting desperately for a Wii since launch, always just missing them or finding out the store was (still) sold out. Until a friend suggested I take an excursion about fifteen minutes north into the wine country, where I found a small-town Target that had a full shelf! When I asked an employee just how many they had, his computer reported a total (on shelf and in the back room) of 73! Turns out there was a treasure trove of Wiis just a few minutes away and I never knew.

Re:I guess that means they're actuall making them

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not an accident or error on Nintendo's part, but instead a carefully planned way to grab power from their suppliers. In my MBA program we study an interesting case about Nintendo in the 80's bossing everyone around because they were the big dog, and it seems the company is trying to regain some of that swagger. Consider, if Toys R Us is constantly begging for 80k consoles (made up #) but is only getting 40k consoles from Nintendo, power in the relationship belongs to Nintendo. This power lets them exert pressure on the retailers - for instance, they tell Toys R Us that they can bump them up to 60k consoles delivered, but in exchange they are going to need an end cap display in the store, 10 extra feet of retail space, and some discounted advertising in the circulars. As it stands now, it seems the company has done an excellent job and are poised to again be the "it" toy this winter (bolstered by the Zapper and Mario and Super Smash).

How successful is this strategy? Well consider that a $1,000 investment in Nintendo two years ago is worth $5,000 today.

Re:I guess that means they're actuall making them

[seebs]

They've already ramped production up quite a bit. I think they're leery of spending a lot of money ramping up production only to finally saturate demand, and then have nothing to show for that money... Or, worse (from their perspective), ramp up production and end up with quality control issues.

I think at this point it's fairly clear that 1.5M/month is not enough.

Re:I don't get it

[Kredal]

It is total sales. So the 360 has had a year longer to rack up less sales than the Wii. "Despite" is correct.

Re:Unsolicited math analysis that might have value

[Daverd]

You fail to take into account that Sony [business2.com] and Microsoft [gamespot.com] take a loss on each console sold, whereas Nintendo [arstechnica.com] actually makes a profit on them.

He might not have the 480p cable

[Rob Simpson]

The cable that comes with the Wii is 480i...The digital "HDTV" cable is a separate purchase, which I think is a mistake. The difference is image quality is immediately obvious.

Re:He might not have the 480p cable

[xero314]

Just out of curiosity, did you remember to change the output setting in the Wii to 480p from whatever the default is

changing from 480i to 480p will not improve the quality of the image produced. It will still be less than 1/4 the number of pixels an HDTV is capable of displaying. The only thing changing to progressive scan will do is increase the rate of refresh and therefor reduce motion blur. At best this will make edges more crisp which will actually make the image look more grainy than it would interlaced as the oversized pixels will be more pronounced. At 19 inches the difference between a 480 and 1080 image is very little, but at even 40 or more images the difference is staggering. Those of us that have viewed a 1080 image regularly have a hard time watching 480 images when we have the choice.

Re:Sooooo...

[GregPK]

ntdoy.pk is the stock ticker here in the US. The foriegn investment fees aren't that high and you don't pay anything until you pull the money out anyways. Also, the time to buy nintendo stock would've been about 2 months before launch at around 34 a share which I did. Then the time to sell was around the 60(hasn't really gone past that since) a share which I sold it at. Then of course, bought Apple at 120 and laughing all the way to the bank as it continues it's climb to 200 which I totally expect by the end of the year Based on the existing options and calls already purchased out there. I don't see Nintendo really getting past the price of say 73 by the end of the year from its current 58. Long term though, I could see it getting to 93 by this time next year in anticipation of things coming out. Microsoft likely won't hit the numbers till service pack 1 hits the shelf and they bring some new people into thier marketing department (Channel marketing)Which needs vast improvements.