I've never had a lot of respect for market analysts -- they're basically people who charge a lot to tell me something that is usually incorrect. This latest report states that the Wii won't meet demand until 2009, which I think is grossly overestimating demand.
I helped a friend of mine two weeks ago secure a Wii for him and his family. He'd been looking for one for the last 5 months, having several close calls, but no success. Nintendo has managed to sell over a million Wiis in the last 5 months, and they are just now ramping up production. With a population of over 300 million in the US, it means that your chances of owning a Wii are 1 in 300. The best selling of Nintendo's products was the NES, and they managed 60 million units sold world wide, which were sold over a 6 year period. These were not sold evenly, but probably resembled a bell curve. Putting on average, 12 million units sold per year. Nintendo seems capable of producing about 6.6 million per 6 month period, which puts them at about 13 million per year, which means that worst case scenario you wait until the end of the year before you get one. I'm pretty sure that by the time October '07 rolls around, there should be enough Wiis to meet demand. It is unlikely that a year after the console's release that it should still be unavailable. No console has ever done that, save for the Nintendo DS in Japan (where the DS is much much more than just a game system).
So do I think Mr "No Wiis until 2009" is wrong? You bet I do. I've seen shortages for most game system launches and none of them has ever gone on longer than 6 months. The Wii will likely break that, but extend the record by two years? That's just unlikely.
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