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Over 600,000 Wiis served
Nintendo recaps its new system's first eight days at retail, says more than 75 percent of Wii owners also picked up Zelda.
By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot
Posted Nov 28, 2006 2:18 am EET
While Sony said it would have 400,000 PlayStation 3 systems ready for its North American launch, Nintendo consistently refused to put a comparable figure on its own efforts with the Wii launch. Instead it would say only that it would ship 4 million systems worldwide by the end of the year.

Now that the launch has come and gone, Nintendo has finally tallied up the number of Wiis it has sold. Today the company said that more than 600,000 Wiis were sold in the Americas in the console's first eight days of release.

"We've shipped retailers several times the amount of hardware the other company was able to deliver for its launch around the same time--and we still sold out," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said in a statement. Leading up to the PS3 launch, one analyst predicted that Sony would fall well short of its shipment goal, suggesting that fewer than 200,000 PS3s would be available on day one.

First-party software and accessory sales brought in more than $190 million on their own. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess in particular rang up strong sales of more than 454,000, or three games for every four consoles. Nintendo said the system's downloadable game service, the Virtual Console, was also a hit, though it gave no figures to describe how big a hit it was.

How many did the Xbox360 launch with?

Not enough.


(IIRC 350,000)

According to this, there were 326,000 for the month of November 2005. So, it may have been pwned by Wii, but it at least beat the PS3!

And...the business practice of selling far fewer numbers of a system than the demand can support gets Sony money how, exactly?

This just reinforces my view that whoever's in charge of Sony has his head literally stuck up his ass.

I have to admit that the Wii is looking way better than I had originally thought. I still think that the Wii remote may end up being another gimmicky nintendo feature after a year or so, but I think the Wii's low price will really win out this christmas with your average parent looking to buy one of the next gen systems for their kid.

Sorry, the copypasta potential was too great to resist.

Panzer Grenadier wrote:I have to admit that the DS is looking way better than I had originally thought. I still think that the stylus and dual screens may end up being another gimmicky nintendo feature after a year or so, but I think the DS's low price will really win out this christmas with your average parent looking to buy one of the next gen handhelds for their kid.

Xisiqomelir wrote:Sorry, the copypasta potential was too great to resist.

The same argument applies to Microsoft, too!

Panzer Grenadier wrote:I have to admit that the XBox360 is looking way better than I had originally thought. I still think that the hard drive and Xbox Live may end up being another gimmicky Microsoft feature after a year or so, but I think the 360's low price will really win out this christmas with your average parent looking to buy one of the next gen consoles for their kid.

Except peopole weren't saing that about the 360, but talk like that was commonplace for the DS.

Davis 51 wrote:Except peopole weren't saing that about the 360, but talk like that was commonplace for the DS.

You seem to be missing the point entirely. Replace a few words in Grenadier's post and his argument can be applied to anything.

Molyneux wrote:And...the business practice of selling far fewer numbers of a system than the demand can support gets Sony money how, exactly?

This just reinforces my view that whoever's in charge of Sony has his head literally stuck up his ass.

There are three options here:

1.) Sony is trying to make the PS3 seem more desirable by limiting how many consoles are available to the public. People will hear about how electronics stores are turning away customers and there aren't enough units to meet demand, making it seem like a must-have, high-end item to the status-obsessed moron portion of the population. "Only 400,000 being shipped worldwide? It must be hard to make/rare and therefore a valuable commodity!" Once that "must-have" seed is planted in consumers' brains, Sony ships out more consoles and people who might have passed on the console initially end up buying it because it's a hot, fashionable item.

2.) Sony was worried about how many units would sell on the launch date and scaled down the number shipped on launch. It would look bad if they shipped out a million consoles but only half of those sold, with the other half sitting on the shelves collecting dust.

3.) Sony really was only able to produce 400,000 consoles in time for the planned launch date, and somebody decided that the negative effects that would come from pushing back the launch date outweighed the negative effects that come from launching with not enough consoles to meet demand. In this scenario, the Sony executives were probably concerned with beating Nintendo's console launch and getting the PS3 into stores and the public eye in time for the holiday sales rush.

General Zod wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:Sorry, the copypasta potential was too great to resist.

The same argument applies to Microsoft, too!

Panzer Grenadier wrote:I have to admit that the XBox360 is looking way better than I had originally thought. I still think that the hard drive and Xbox Live may end up being another gimmicky Microsoft feature after a year or so, but I think the 360's low price will really win out this christmas with your average parent looking to buy one of the next gen consoles for their kid.

Hard drive and XBox Live are gimmicky? They were selling points of the original XBox.

You fail.

You seem to be missing the point entirely. Replace a few words in Grenadier's post and his argument can be applied to anything.

He's saying that it's a repeat scenario. Nobody criticized the XBox as gimmicky, but tons of people called the DS a gimmick that would be blown away by the PSP.

Grasscutter wrote:

Molyneux wrote:And...the business practice of selling far fewer numbers of a system than the demand can support gets Sony money how, exactly?

This just reinforces my view that whoever's in charge of Sony has his head literally stuck up his ass.

There are three options here:

1.) Sony is trying to make the PS3 seem more desirable by limiting how many consoles are available to the public. People will hear about how electronics stores are turning away customers and there aren't enough units to meet demand, making it seem like a must-have, high-end item to the status-obsessed moron portion of the population. "Only 400,000 being shipped worldwide? It must be hard to make/rare and therefore a valuable commodity!" Once that "must-have" seed is planted in consumers' brains, Sony ships out more consoles and people who might have passed on the console initially end up buying it because it's a hot, fashionable item.

2.) Sony was worried about how many units would sell on the launch date and scaled down the number shipped on launch. It would look bad if they shipped out a million consoles but only half of those sold, with the other half sitting on the shelves collecting dust.

3.) Sony really was only able to produce 400,000 consoles in time for the planned launch date, and somebody decided that the negative effects that would come from pushing back the launch date outweighed the negative effects that come from launching with not enough consoles to meet demand. In this scenario, the Sony executives were probably concerned with beating Nintendo's console launch and getting the PS3 into stores and the public eye in time for the holiday sales rush.

Actually, there's one more option, which I believe to be true.

Sony:
A) Started manufacturing quite late, but had to launch anyway because they couldn't let Microsoft and Nintendo have Christmas to themselves.
B) Had a lot of problems with the blue diodes and low yields.
C) Are taking a MASSIVE loss on every system, much larger than Microsoft took with the original XBox, so they don't want to manufacture too many until the cost goes down.

Put all these together.

Praxis wrote:

He's saying that it's a repeat scenario. Nobody criticized the XBox as gimmicky, but tons of people called the DS a gimmick that would be blown away by the PSP.

Then how come I don't see as much mentioned in his post? Unless you've somehow developed telepathic abilities and can magically comprehend what he meant to say, as far as I can tell was being perfectly serious.

Because anyone who was around during the DS launch should remember the EXACT same arguements being passed around.

(by "he" i mean Xisiqomelir, not Panzer)

Praxis wrote:Because anyone who was around during the DS launch should remember the EXACT same arguements being passed around.

(by "he" i mean Xisiqomelir, not Panzer)

Except there's still nothing in Panzer's post to indicate that he's being sarcastic in the slightest fashion. I'm not denying that similar arguments weren't passed around, but as far as I can tell his post is completely serious.

General Zod wrote:

Praxis wrote:

He's saying that it's a repeat scenario. Nobody criticized the XBox as gimmicky, but tons of people called the DS a gimmick that would be blown away by the PSP.

Then how come I don't see as much mentioned in his post? Unless you've somehow developed telepathic abilities and can magically comprehend what he meant to say, as far as I can tell was being perfectly serious.

Oh, for FSM's sake, were you living under a cave the past few years? EVERYONE was saying that the DS was gimmicky, and the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS are made against the Wii now.

Ghetto Edit:

Except there's still nothing in Panzer's post to indicate that he's being sarcastic in the slightest fashion. I'm not denying that similar arguments weren't passed around, but as far as I can tell his post is completely serious.

So, it completely flew over your head. Were you expecting gigantic neon sarcastic signs? It was pretty fucking obvious.

Davis 51 wrote:Ghetto Edit:

Except there's still nothing in Panzer's post to indicate that he's being sarcastic in the slightest fashion. I'm not denying that similar arguments weren't passed around, but as far as I can tell his post is completely serious.

So, it completely flew over your head. Were you expecting gigantic neon sarcastic signs? It was pretty fucking obvious.

Considering I've seen some imbeciles seriously argue that the PS3 is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will completely demolish all other consoles, no. It wasn't that obvious.

What a firestorm of controversy!

"Copypasta" is, of course, a 4chan meme. Panzer's post "X is looking pretty good, but Y features are still gimmicky to me, however the low price is going to make it a good seller" can in fact be applied to any innovative product that was received dubiously on arrival and did well, however I did specifically intend to bring up the DS since it got a disproportionate amount of "gimmicky" cracks on release.

I would also disagree with the 360 as a product of this nature, mainly since it isn't cheap, and also as Davis 51 says, no one really thought of it as "gimmicky", per se. Thus, it doesn't fit quite so perfectly into the copypasta as the DS does.

General Zod wrote: Considering I've seen some imbeciles seriously argue that the PS3 is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will completely demolish all other consoles, no. It wasn't that obvious.

Heh, we've all seen those before. But, in the same vain of the 360, the same praises/criticisms of the PS3 would not apply to the Nintendo Systems by their very nature.

Grasscutter wrote: 1.) Sony is trying to make the PS3 seem more desirable by limiting how many consoles are available to the public. People will hear about how electronics stores are turning away customers and there aren't enough units to meet demand, making it seem like a must-have, high-end item to the status-obsessed moron portion of the population. "Only 400,000 being shipped worldwide? It must be hard to make/rare and therefore a valuable commodity!" Once that "must-have" seed is planted in consumers' brains, Sony ships out more consoles and people who might have passed on the console initially end up buying it because it's a hot, fashionable item.

The Scary Jennifer Government option. Really they have a million hidden in a warehouse ready to be released on December 19th - 21st. In Sony's dreams.

This is actually probably true as a secondary strategy, AKA "making the best of a bad situation". If I were Sony, I would be hoping to hell that the scarcity makes enough hype to make up for the... scarcity.

Davis 51 wrote:

General Zod wrote: Considering I've seen some imbeciles seriously argue that the PS3 is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will completely demolish all other consoles, no. It wasn't that obvious.

Heh, we've all seen those before. But, in the same vain of the 360, the same praises/criticisms of the PS3 would not apply to the Nintendo Systems by their very nature.

Except they're so generalised that they're simply not very good criticisms considering the sheer amount of things they can be applied to. (Admittedly the 360 probably wasn't the best thing I could've thought up). Even if they're not being serious about it.

I recall an editorial in GI around the time of the Nintendo DS release that attempted to explain some of the rationale behind console release strategies. I do not have the issue any longer and if anyone knows of corroboration for this or similar arguments feel free to chime in. As I do not have this information myself, take this with a grain of salt. As best I can recall, here goes:

Shortfall of new consoles which can't meet demand is nothing new, as we can all recall past instances such as the NDS and prior launches. This is because the creators of the console attempt to strike a balance between manufacturing capability and projected demand. Provided it is within their manufacturing cap (which one would hope it was) they would then attempt to launch with about 40 to 60 percent of projected demand. This way they can sell out for the holidays and allows them to post 100% sales of console X for its first release quarter and usually near that rate for the following quarter. Scarcity allows them to charge a premium for their in demand product and the share-holders are happy with the successful sales.

That's the argument as best as I can recall and I'm sure that some of Sony's share-holders are very pleased with the rampant "success" of the new system. Sorry I don't have a more reliable source but it struck me at the time (and still does) as a rather believable interpretation of the corporate mind-set. Is this a possible scenario?

Edit: Tangentially, do we have hard numbers for Sony's release numbers, the last I heard put them far, far under that 400,000 projection. As in, less than half of that. Any word on their final tally?

Stop misusing the word 'meme' immediately. Oh wait, you post on 4chan, you're too stupid to know the difference between a meme and a trend or habit. ZING!

Can someone link me to PS3 wankery? I guess I'm insulated here at SDN, but I really can't see why anyone would pay AU$1000 for a console with one passable game.

Stark wrote:Stop misusing the word 'meme' immediately. Oh wait, you post on 4chan, you're too stupid to know the difference between a meme and a trend or habit. ZING!

Can someone link me to PS3 wankery? I guess I'm insulated here at SDN, but I really can't see why anyone would pay AU$1000 for a console with one passable game.

So far the only obvious PS3 wankery I've seen was on 4chan, several weeks ago. So the post is probably deleted by now. Though I'm sure wankery exists elsewhere. Not that I post on 4chan mind you, I just go there for the wallpapers and occasionally /y/.

Though there was that one review someone in Japan made that was posted here awhile ago. He spent paragraphs raving about the PS3's hardware capabilities while barely making a mention about gameplay.