Gap between sales and ships: it’s the Wii’s turn
Analysts must love gaps. They sense them like air and power senses vacuums, and Knievel loves jumping ’em. One PJ McNealy was quite willing to see the gap between PS3 sales and PS3 shipments and draw his own conclusions from there. But the PS3 ain’t the only game in town. Enter the Wii, and Michael Pachter. To condense the analysis of the Wedbush Morgan analyst, as reported by Next Generation:
- Nintendo: 2 million Wiis in the US by 2nd week January
- NDP sales reports: 1.1 million sold in 2006
- Equals around 900,000 unaccounted for.
- Caveats: Okay, probably 90,000 went to Canada…
- … and around 250,000 (the standard estimate) still on the way (in an airplane or a ship)
- Still 560,000 unaccounted for.
“I really don’t get it,” he wrote, when trying to explain the half-a-million discrepancy in his doodle pad. One potential explanation he had was that NDP may have under-reported Wii sales. Given that one of our commenters had mentioned that NDP doesn’t include sales from the three big retailers – Toys ‘R’ Us, Walmart, Target – that’s a potential explanation. Next-Gen says that NDP only covers 60% of US retailers, though but that’s probably the number of retailers, not by volume of sales.
Pachter also mentions one other potential reason: “He also said that Nintendo may have ‘stretched their number’ by rounding the global target up to 4 million or by actually shipping less than the proposed 2 million to the US.” He did mention earlier that “Every time I checked, there were NONE at retail during December, so there is no inventory rotting on the shelf.” Hence, he didn’t get it.
Let’s see if Nintendo’s head plumber will respond to this.
Analysts must love gaps. They sense them like air and power senses vacuums, and Knievel loves jumping ’em. One PJ McNealy was quite willing to see the gap between PS3 sales and PS3 shipments and draw his own conclusions from there. But the PS3 ain’t the only game in town. Enter the Wii, and Michael Pachter. To condense the analysis of the Wedbush Morgan analyst, as reported by Next Generation:
- Nintendo: 2 million Wiis in the US by 2nd week January
- NDP sales reports: 1.1 million sold in 2006
- Equals around 900,000 unaccounted for.
- Caveats: Okay, probably 90,000 went to Canada…
- … and around 250,000 (the standard estimate) still on the way (in an airplane or a ship)
- Still 560,000 unaccounted for.
“I really don’t get it,” he wrote, when trying to explain the half-a-million discrepancy in his doodle pad. One potential explanation he had was that NDP may have under-reported Wii sales. Given that one of our commenters had mentioned that NDP doesn’t include sales from the three big retailers – Toys ‘R’ Us, Walmart, Target – that’s a potential explanation. Next-Gen says that NDP only covers 60% of US retailers, though but that’s probably the number of retailers, not by volume of sales.
Pachter also mentions one other potential reason: “He also said that Nintendo may have ‘stretched their number’ by rounding the global target up to 4 million or by actually shipping less than the proposed 2 million to the US.” He did mention earlier that “Every time I checked, there were NONE at retail during December, so there is no inventory rotting on the shelf.” Hence, he didn’t get it.
Let’s see if Nintendo’s head plumber will respond to this.