"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
14 December 2007Where are all the Wiis?Still unmade, apparently, and it's going to cost Nintendo dearly:
The unsated demand is costing Nintendo more than face. Estimates from industry analysts and retailers indicate that the company, which is based in Kyoto, Japan, is giving up $1 billion or more in sales in the ever-important holiday retail season, not including sales of games for those unbuilt consoles.
"It’s staggering," said James Lin, senior analyst at the MDB Capital Group in Santa Monica, Calif., who estimates that Nintendo is leaving $1.3 billion on the table. "They could easily sell double what they’re selling." Nintendo professes to see no problem:
When it comes to its planning, Nintendo says it has not done anything wrong.
"We don't feel like we've made any mistakes," said George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America. All things must pass, George: you need to be on this bandwagon while it's still accelerating. And it is accelerating:
Nintendo sold 981,000 Wiis in the United States in November, its best month yet, while Microsoft sold 770,000 Xbox 360s, and Sony sold 466,000 PlayStation 3 consoles, the market research firm NPD Group said Thursday.
And availability in Britain is so spotty that Nintendo pulled all its UK advertising for the Wii. I'm a firm believer in not flooding the market with hot products, lest you be caught with entire pallets full of returns, but demand for the Wii isn't even coming close to slackening. Posted at 7:33 PM to PEBKAC |