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Nintendo on Wii U preorder sell-outs, 250,000 GameStop customers on waiting lists, production limitations
First let me talk about Wii U. On September 13, we announced details about the two SKUs, the Wii U DELUXE SET and the Wii U BASIC SET, as well as their prices, configurations, launch window titles and launch dates in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. The launch dates for the regions are as shown here.
After making this announcement, we provided our retailers with possible allocation numbers. Although we had not begun advertising in the mass media at that time, many pre-orders started to be placed at retailers, and now we are even hearing that pre-orders are already sold out at some stores.
Of the two SKUs, it seems that the Wii U DELUXE SET, which is the high-end model, is doing better in terms of pre-order numbers. To give a nice anecdote which illustrates how well pre-orders are doing at the moment, GameStop, which is the largest specialty retailer of video games in the U.S., created a “waiting list" after all of their allocated pre-orders had been sold out, and as of last week, more than 250,000 consumers had put their name and contact details on the waiting list for a Wii U system.
As production only started this summer, it has now become more likely that it is our production capacity, rather than consumer demand, that will place limits on our Wii U prospects for this calendar year, but we will make every effort to supply as many units as possible, and we will strive to continue to ship Wii U hardware without any interruptions in each region even after its launch.
In this fiscal year we are looking to ship 5.5 million units of Wii U hardware and 24 million units of Wii U software.
By the way, when we launched Wii six years ago, we shipped 5.84 million units of hardware and 28.84 million units of software in its first year. Please note that while this software sales figure includes bundled copies, the software sales estimate I have just shown does not.
Link
After making this announcement, we provided our retailers with possible allocation numbers. Although we had not begun advertising in the mass media at that time, many pre-orders started to be placed at retailers, and now we are even hearing that pre-orders are already sold out at some stores.
Of the two SKUs, it seems that the Wii U DELUXE SET, which is the high-end model, is doing better in terms of pre-order numbers. To give a nice anecdote which illustrates how well pre-orders are doing at the moment, GameStop, which is the largest specialty retailer of video games in the U.S., created a “waiting list" after all of their allocated pre-orders had been sold out, and as of last week, more than 250,000 consumers had put their name and contact details on the waiting list for a Wii U system.
As production only started this summer, it has now become more likely that it is our production capacity, rather than consumer demand, that will place limits on our Wii U prospects for this calendar year, but we will make every effort to supply as many units as possible, and we will strive to continue to ship Wii U hardware without any interruptions in each region even after its launch.
In this fiscal year we are looking to ship 5.5 million units of Wii U hardware and 24 million units of Wii U software.
By the way, when we launched Wii six years ago, we shipped 5.84 million units of hardware and 28.84 million units of software in its first year. Please note that while this software sales figure includes bundled copies, the software sales estimate I have just shown does not.
Link