Nintendo holds back, shuffles Japanese Wii/DS supply
Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 9:48am by Jack
Stay away from the Internet today. Why? Well, Nintendo has allegedly dialed back its Wii and DS supply in Japan, and the weekly sales totals are smaller than they have been in quite a while.
With this in mind, you’ll be able to deftly dodge, duck and barrel roll yourself past all the spin and fanboy nonsense today that says Nintendo’s Ivory Tower is crumbling and will soon collapse under the wait of a Big Daddy and a drunken, unwieldy dragon.
Nonsense, all of it. Wired’s Chris Kohler seems to think that this means Nintendo is preparing for the holiday; or it’s moving product to the States and Europe because of Metroid Prime 3’s successful release; or both.
Regardless, his closing thought is what really matters: “One thing’s for sure: the competition’s never going to catch up.” he said.
September 7th, 2007 at 11:18 am
hmmm- that suggests continued supply problems, even though we’re almost a year in. Nintendo better step up for the holidays; I doubt they want to leave revenue behind if they can’t keep shelves stocked.
September 7th, 2007 at 11:35 am
I love ya jack, always looking out for the fanmen, making sure our jobs are easier.
Seriously though, I’m sure the numbers are down for the reasons you and chris mention (among others). I think they are probably pulling stock from Japan for another reason as well; demand IS softening a bit. It can also be seen in the software sales charts in japan where Wii play/sports and mario party are starting to lose steam and not much is stepping up to take their places in the top 10.
Clearly nintendo isn’t in trouble in the land of the rising sun yet, but there are some indicators that they need to make some moves to avoid a loss in momentum.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Nintendo owns Japan. They wanna own the U.S…. buying season is about to start there, so just as Steve Jobs said “we want to be as agressive as possible, so if we don’t do it this holiday, we would have to wait a year…” The only way Nintendo can get competition in Japan would be if Sony decided to cut $200 from the PS3 and $100 from the PSP, yet Nintendo has a lot of elbow room to fight that strategy.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Obviously. Nintendo is in BIG trouble.
I mean it is the END of the road here for Nintendo.
AM I RITE?!11!
Seriously, they are just stocking up for November/ December sales OUTSIDE of Japan. Where they will need all thoses extra units.
Not exactly rocket science.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
VGChartz data says that US Wii sales are up around 50% from their usual 80k level during the last week (over Metroid’s release). Simultaneously Japanese sales have been down about 20k on their usual week for the last fortnight. This says they were taking advantage of the Japanese lull (all console sales were down, apparently due to the end of school holidays or something) to boost US shipments over this short term period. Their overall sales rate is pretty much constant, which is full supply capacity so far as we know. Unfortunately for Nintendo it seems several of the new components manufacturers dropped the ball on their production startup, so they may very well not be able to increase capacity in time for Christmas. Nintendo certainly knew they had a monster and had to increase capacity in March and I’m sure it’s not for lack of trying. It seems that not being a hardware manufacturer themselves, there’s very little Nintendo can do about the situation. Therefore they’re selling every system they can make atm, and leads me to believe there will be very little in the way of a stockpile.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Yeah, it’s actually interesting to look at the weekly Japanese numbers… Between the drop first occuring, and the next week of sales… there was a difference of around 200 units in sales, and in a positive direction. This would pretty much indicate that stock was being completely sold out. There was less than a tenth of a precent change in the sales numbers, which is statistically unlikely unless supply is the only limiting factor.
September 8th, 2007 at 11:35 am
@ elmer- interesting insight. any idea if US sales numbers decrease too as the kids head back?