1.8 million Wii units made per month, shortages still expected
By Emilie Branstetter
In a recent interview, Nintendo of America’s marketing chief George Harrison let it known that while production factories are making about 1.8 million units per month this isn’t enough to cover this seasons expected demand.
With early October shoppers starting the season off with high numbers, Nintendo is expecting some shortages come December. Even with this summer’s pre-emptive planning for this holiday season the massive amount of Wii consoles produced will still not be enough.
Talking to Next Generation’s Kris Graft, Harrison explains:
"We’re at a rate now worldwide of about 1.8 million Wiis produced every month, and that’s going to sustain itself until we get on top of this. We’re trying to make decisions on almost a weekly basis about which market to ship the product to, because in Japan it’s a big success, and same in Europe."
Harrison explains that sales are expected to slow down in January but with a lineup of new titles including Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, and Wii Fit heading up the first half of 2008 sales are expected to stay strong.
When asked about both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 during this holiday season, Nintendo didn’t seem terribly concerned about them.
"We don’t focus a lot on the competition. It appears to us that Sony and Microsoft are fighting over the same customer and swapping market share. Our performance seems to be independent of those two."
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Stumble It!
Tips N4G
November 22nd, 2007
No suprise there, even with the lack of software games being bought compared to 360 or PS3 its still going to be strong for a while.