An idea of the top 5 software and hardware repleneshment (based out of Canada)

Long the also-ran platform in the video-game wars, Nintendo's new Wii console is creating a whole new category of headache for the company: this time out they are too popular.

Nintendo Canada doesn't want to tell us how many Wii units are in the Canadian marketplace, and they can only tell us how many we can expect in the future in the most general terms, but they can say that they didn't anticipate the demand during Sunday's launch that saw a 100% sell out at the country's biggest retailers.

"We're struggling to try and find a solution to a situation in which demand has far outstripped supply," says Nintendo Canada marketing director Pierre-Paul Trepanier. "The expectation was that within a few days (after launch) Nintendo would still be stock everywhere."

What Nintendo can say is that beginning this Thursday and Friday (in most regions, but perhaps not the Maritimes and Eastern Quebec) the next shipment of Wii's should begin hitting stores. Its project the retailers will get up to 50% of the launch-day shipment, which if launch-day patterns repeat, could see most major retail locations with 25-40 in stores.

What happens next week, and the week after is in more doubt: Trepanier says that every region in North America has been clamouring for more equipment, and in the Atlanta region company officials were hit with an urgent plea for more nunchuk controllers. Trepanier claims the Canadian market is doing well keeping its accessories in stock.

But Trepanier says that while there have been no production issues in churning out enough Wii consoles for the target of 4 million units produced and sold globally by the end of 2006 (with perhaps a little more than one million of that available in the American market) the consumer interest seems to have reached far wider and deeper beyond hard-core gamers than Nintendo could have dreamed.

"We wanted that to happen eventually, but we haven't even kicked in our TV advertising yet," says Trepanier. "We purposely held back on TV advertising so that we wouldn't be advertising a product that you couldn't find in stores. We didn't expect groups like families and people who haven't played video games in a while to be suddenly be interested. The demand has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's been hard to deal with."

But with the crunch on to find your console some strange stories have begun circulating on the Internet and in conversation with retail workers at major electronics chains. One story involved a store putting more units on the floor Monday after selling out Sunday, then pulling those units from the shelves for some bewildering reason. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that Nintendo and retailers are creating an artificial shortage.

"I wasn't aware that there were any stocks being held back in retail," Trepanier says. "It's surprising though, I would expect them to want them to make sure all their consumers are happy ... I can assure you that at our warehouse in Vancouver, we have zero units."

Now the company has imposed austerity measures to make sure consumers get first crack at the systems.

Nintendo Canada has had to let its workers and marketing partners know that there will be no employee-plan or promotional units available to them until at least 2007, one memo suggested they go line up at the store like everyone else if they really needed it for Christmas.

As well, both Nintendo and third-party software for the new console has been doing well, with some Canadian retailers reporting that for every Wii sold a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess went with it. Ubisoft's innovative first-person shooter Red Steel came in second place, and Call of Duty 3, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 round out the top five.

And Trepanier says there has been some strong evidence that, unlike the PlayStation 3 experience, most of the Wii's bought go from the store to being played in living rooms, instead of flipped on eBay. Though no official numbers have been collected yet, Nintendo's Virtual Console (where players can download classic Nintendo and Sega games) has experienced far higher than expected traffic.

But as Trepanier says, this game is a marathon, not a sprint, and while encouraging so far, the first week isn't even over yet. The real test will be The NPD Group market data for December, which will be released in the second week of January 2007. Then Trepanier will know just how far down the track this opening week burst has taken Nintendo.

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Bluevoodu said:

That's pretty cool... but they are still using "pull" ... and still creating a false demand.

but hey... it's great to see a Nintendo console so popular.

Bv :hat

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Mai Valentine said:

Well we got 9 last Wednesday that we were instructed to hold for Black Friday, but those 9 sold out in like 10 minutes yesterday, and now that Black Friday has passed, there shouldn't be any retailers holding back stock. As much as I love the Wii, it's getting annoying having everyone call for them. The demand really is very high. For every one call that I get asking about when we'll get more PS3s, I get like 20 Wii calls.

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Aprilsrain said:

That's good news for us nintendoheads.  I think they struck gold this time around with trying to create something different.  X-box and Play Station are gonna be fighting each other and Nintendo's going to enjoy the benefits of being off in a different, larger market segment. 

Any of you guys seen the nintendo commercials?  they're pretty cool.  Really emphasize the gameplay by showing people hacking and slashing with their wiimotes.   

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Strubes said:

yea, cept microsoft and sony aren't competing. I mean, nothing's going to beat the 360 this gen. They jus had too much of a head start.

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Bluevoodu said:

That's pretty cool... but they are still using "pull" ... and still creating a false demand.

but hey... it's great to see a Nintendo console so popular.

Bv :hat

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you'll see the Nintendo of Canada representative denies that 100% and says that if any retailers are holding any units back, taht's a conscious choice of those retailers. Did you even read the part about where there's not even going to be a special employee program so employees can get the system until 2007...?

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Auron234 said:

:lol I laugh at that statement

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Sartori said:

I agree. That's hilarious.

360 may have some nice sales right now, but it's not a worldwide market machine. It will never penetrate Japan and this will  be the failure.

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Sartori said:

Not caring about how a console does in another region if you're aiming for it to succeed is just foolish and lacking in foresight.

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Sartori said:

Failure in what terms?

Sales?

Profit?

What?

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Sartori said:

OMFG.

Microsoft lost 4 BILLION DOLLARS ON X BOX.

Now you're just talking lunacy.

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Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have recently released their financial report for the third quarter of this year, and from what we can see, it begins to shed light on their recent problems, delays and movements with regards to their upcoming consoles - the figures. First up, we have Sony:

Earnings dropped by 94% for the past quarters, due mostly to their laptop battery problems, leaving them with total earnings of $14.4 million.
They've experienced a total loss of $369 million due to PS3 startup costs in the past few months.
Their game revenues are down by 20%, leaving them with total of %1.4 billion in revenues. This was caused by the decreasing sales of PS2 and PSP units, along with the recent PS2 price cut.
They've sold a total of 5 million PS2's and 3.89 million PSP's in this quarter.
They currently hold a balance of 4.7 billion, with an additional $3 billion from debts.

Next, Microsoft:

Their Games and Entertainment division had a 70% increase in profits last quarter, boosting it up to $1.03 billion in total profits.
In connection with this, said division now cuts down its $173 million deficit to just $96 million. Microsoft plans to make this division profitable by June 30 next year.
Microsoft currently has four million XBLA subscribers around the world, with plans for them to hit the six million mark by June 30.
They also plan to have 160 games for the XBox 360 by the end of the year.
They've calculated that per console, there's 2.9 accessories and 5.1 games available.
They've currently sold 6 million Xbox 360's worldwide (3.5 in North America, 1.7 in Europe, 700k around the world). This falls short of their forecasted 10 million units sold by the time the PS3 launches on November 17.
They plan to have sold a total of 15-17 million Xbox 360's by June 30, next year.

Last (but not least) we have Nintendo taking the panel:

They sold 10 million Nintendo DS, and DS Lites in the past six months, totalling 26.8 million units since its initial release in 2004.
Their new Super Mario Brothers title sold 6.7 million copies worldwide last quarter.
Nine of their DS titles sold more than one million units worldwide in the last quarter.
Nintendo expects to sell four million Wii units by January, and a further two million by March 31 worldwide.
They expect to sell 17 million Wii games by March 31.
They've had a sales profit of $2.5 billion in this quarter - a 69% increase from last year.
Their current net income is at $450.6 million.
They're expecting a total of $6.2 billion for sales and $845 million in profits by March 31.
They've increased their DS prediction from 17 to 20 million units sold worldwide within this year.
They've upped their original forecast of 2.5 million sold GBA's to 3.3 million for this year.

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