After weeks of research, VGC has assembled NES shipment and sell-through figures to get an idea of how well Wii might perform. The following is an analysis of what sales precedents will carry over into the Wii era in similar situations

The NES Precedent

Jacob Mazel

Since many of the sources used for this piece are from subscription based services only, rather than cite them directly, here is the link to the thread that has all the excerpts from the online sources found by valuable Vgchartz members like BKK2. The vast majority of information comes from the New York Times archives, Highbeam archives ( a collection of news and business news archives), Galenet archives, Reuters archives, Nintendo’s IR Website, Steven Kent’s Ultimate History of Videogames, Famitsu Magazine, and Vgchartz "internal research". In cases where information from historical sources appears to contradict other sources, the information that makes sense more 'intuitively' is used. If you happen to have better information than the sources listed in the thread above, please email us at admin@vgchartz.com or jmazel@vgchartz.com.

The NES was the foundation of Nintendo’s business in the 1980s, and each successive console through GameCube in 2001 was an attempt to out perform the NES. However, until the Wii, Nintendo’s consoles sold fewer and fewer units than the NES. NES shipments reached 61.91m worldwide. The SNES topped out at 49.1m shipped. N64 eventually hit 32.93m worldwide. The recently deceased GameCube topped out at 21.72m shipped.

However, the Wii has reversed the nasty little trend. At over 32 million units in sell through, the Wii has not only passed Game Cube sales and shipments (21.74m shipped), but it is on the verge of passing Nintendo 64 shipments if it has not already. Nintendo recently raised its shipment projection for both Wii and DS for the year ending March 2009. Through March 2008, Nintendo had shipped 24.45m Wiis. With the revised forecast, Nintendo expects to have shipped 50.95m Wiis on March 31, 2009. If that is the case, Wii will be Nintendo’s second best selling console, slightly ahead of the SNES.

In its day, the NES was similar to Wii. Both were perpetual sellouts over extended periods (at least 18 months in both cases) and Nintendo was accused of manipulating supply to build demand. Each platform had new types of games that competitors did not have. Both platforms used dated technological specs. Each attempted to provide services slightly beyond the “narrow” focus of games that typical consoles offer, but were less optimized to do so than rival devices (Xbox 360, PS3, PCs – then and now). There are differences too – NES was essentially a failure in Europe. Wii is outselling NES, but NES was a monopoly in its USA and Japan hey-day of the mid to late 80s. NES re-established the USA market for videogames, Wii is leading the world market in a direction where the GTA audience is less important, and the Nintendogs audience gets its say.

Perhaps the most striking similarity in both heydays is just how rich Nintendo gets from hitting a home run. With both Wii and NES, Nintendo’s market capitalization topped Sony’s by billions of dollars. Given that Nintendo employs fewer than 4,000 people and focuses on only one industry, it’s fairly amazing how much money the company makes. When taking econimics classes, my professor used to remark about how the Nintendo peak of the late 80s was associated with fairly legendary business statements like “Nintendo accounts for 1/10 of the USA-Japan trade deficit” (internet archives claim this to be true in 1989) and “Nintendo was the first billion dollar software company” (haven’t been able to confirm this). Today, the Financial Times argues that the average Nintendo employee contributes a staggering 1.6m in profit to the company.

To understand how Wii will perform, compared to the NES peak years it’s quite useful to look at just how and where NES sold its units. Thanks to newspaper archives, and the communal research abilities made possible by the internet, we can roughly reassemble NES shipments, and by extension, sell through even though Nintendo would not (or could not) provide figures for the NES period to Vgchartz when contacted.

NES Shipments & NES Estimated Sell-Through  

The NES launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 – 25 years ago – as the Famicom. Nintendo’s Investor Relations website puts NES shipments to date at 19.35m in Japan . Vgchartz puts NES shipments in Japan at 18.13m on March 31, 1993. The 1993 figure comes from an old issue of Japanese magazine Famitsu which was closely aligned with Nintendo. Working back further, Steven Kent’s Ultimate History of Videogames says Nintendo had sold 500,000 units of the Famicom within two months of launch. Prior to September 1, 1989, Nintendo’s financial years ended on August 31. That means the 500,000 figure is likely shipped, and through August 31, 1983. Kent’s book goes on to say, that within 18 months of launch, Famicom had sold 3m units in Japan. The figure is likely shipped, and through December 31, 1984, though with the fiscal year ending in August, it’s possible the figure could be through November 1984 or February 1985. Regardless, it serves as a reference point for later figures. Numerous articles from various newspaper archives put NES shipments at over 6m in Japan in 1986 (likely through August 31, 1986), while a piece in the New York Times put NES shipments at 13m in Japan in 1988.

Normally, given a mid-1983 launch it would be reasonable to expect NES to peak in 1986 in Japan. However, it launched quite slowly, and was sold out for much of the time from late 1985 to 1988 in Japan. The launch of the Famicom Disk Drive further complicates matters. While NES ended up shipping 19.35m units in Japan, only about 4% of that came in 1983. PS2 in comparison has sold almost 23m units in Japan to date, but it sold 3.5m units from March to December of 2000, compared to the VGC estimate of 800,000 or so NES units in July to December 1983. At 80,000/week vs. 33,000/week at the respective launches it is clear that the Playstation brand was well established, in contrast, the NES was establishing Nintendo as a brand .

The long slow burn and late peak for NES in Japan allowed Nintendo to work on establishing itself region by region. NES was such a force in Japan that a successor was not needed for over seven years. As potent as the Super Nintendo was, Nintendo 64 launched less than six years after the SNES in Japan. Even PS2 launched only about five and half years after PS1 in Japan. PS3 launched over six years after PS2 in Japan, and in retrospect, it looks like a mistake as there was enough PS2 weakness in 2005-2006 for Nintendo to take back Japan with DS and Wii. That SNES sold almost as well in Japan as NES, despite launching over seven years after it speaks to just how successful the NES was. However, SNES in 1994-1996 was in a similar position to PS2 in 2005-2006, and Saturn and PS1 were able to break Nintendo’s domination of Japan, since N64 launched almost six years after SNES and millions of units behind both PS1 & Saturn in Japan.

In the United States, the great videogame crash of 1983-1984 gave Nintendo time to rework the Famicom for American audiences. Gimmicks like ROB the Robot got the machine into stores in New York City in October of 1985 as a videogame machine that wasn’t a videogame machine. When Nintendo sold 90,000 NES consoles in New York by the end of 1985, Nintendo set up its next test market in Los Angeles in February of 1986. NES launched nationally in August (and September by some sources) of 1986. By New Years Day 1987, Nintendo had sold over 1 million NES consoles in the USA. An article in the High Beam archives says Nintendo sold 28m NES consoles in the USA from 1986-1990. By the time NES stopped selling; Nintendo had shipped 34m NES consoles in the Americas.

The European & “rest of the world” launch was comparably complicated to the USA launch. Nintendo divided the rest of the world into region ‘a’ and region ‘b’. Region a saw a launch on September 1, 1986, while Region b saw a launch in 1987. Despite weak sales in regions outside the USA and Japan, the two-pronged launch led to a wide peak by time, even though sales in absolute terms were low for the NES in Europe and elsewhere outside the USA & Japan hot zone. The end of the Cold War also allowed Nintendo to set up shop in formerly Communist areas, which helped keep NES going in Europe a bit longer than it would have lasted otherwise. Still, Nintendo only shipped 8.56m NES consoles in non-Americas & Japan regions. That figure has been topped by both SNES and Wii in “Others” as well as Nintendo’s portables and numerous platforms from rival companies.

Overall, the NES shipped 61.91m units worldwide. With a look through archives cited above, Vgchartz has estimated sell through as follows, with the assumption (for simplicity) that every shipped unit eventually reached the homes of gamers:



End of
Japan Yrly Sales
Am Yearly Sales
Others Yrly Sales
World Yrly Sales
Worldwide LTD Sales

1982
0
0
0
0
                             0

1983
800,000
0
0
800,000
800,000

1984
1,300,000
0
  
1,300,000
2,100,000

1985
2,000,000
90,000
0
2,090,000
4,190,000

1986
2,400,000
1,000,000
500,000
3,900,000
8,090,000

1987
2,700,000
4,100,000
700,000
7,500,000
15,590,000

1988
2,500,000
6,400,000
900,000
9,800,000
25,390,000

1989
2,000,000
9,200,000
1,150,000
12,350,000
37,740,000

1990
1,500,000
7,200,000
1,350,000
10,050,000
47,790,000

1991
1,200,000
3,000,000
1,150,000
5,350,000
53,140,000

1992
900,000
1,500,000
950,000
3,350,000
56,490,000

1993
650,000
800,000
650,000
2,100,000
58,590,000

1994
350,000
465,000
450,000
1,265,000
59,855,000

1995
200,000
165,000
350,000
715,000
60,570,000

1996
150,000
60,000
250,000
460,000
61,030,000

1997
130,000
15,000
100,000
245,000
61,275,000

1998
120,000
5,000
50,000
175,000
61,450,000

1999
100,000
0
10,000
110,000
61,560,000

2000
80,000
0
0
80,000
61,640,000

2001
70,000
0
0
70,000
61,710,000

2002
60,000
0
0
60,000
61,770,000

2003
50,000
0
0
50,000
61,820,000

2004
40,000
0
0
40,000
61,860,000

2005
30,000
0
0
30,000
61,890,000

2006
15,000
0
0
15,000
61,905,000

2007
5,000
0
0
5,000
61,910,000


Americas data specifically is based on Kent’s Americas shipment data (see next paragraph), and specific figures from a piece in the Highbeam which says 28m NES consoles sold between 1986 and 1990 in the USA. The New York Times puts NES at 0.09m in 1985 and 1m in 1986. Another Highbeam article has NES at 4.1m in 1987. Various articles put NES at 9m-9.2m in 1989, and 7.2m in 1990. Simple math puts NES in the mid 6m range in the missing year, 1988.   

Steven Kent’s book says Nintendo shipped 1.8m NES consoles in the year ending August 31, 1987 in (what is likely) the Americas, followed by 5.4m in the year ending August 31, 1988, and then 9.3m in the year ending August 31, 1989.  If the data in his book is correct, the NES must have had its first banner Christmas in 1987 as shipments for the year ending August 31, 1987 were 1.8m, while ‘sellthrough’ for NES in calendar 1987 is placed at 4.1m by Highbeam. Nationally, the September-December 1986 period would have been similar to the Wii launch, with Nintendo underestimating demand. Given that videogames were positioned as toys until very recently, it’s likely that over 50%, perhaps as high as 70% of yearly videogame sales were in November and December, vs. the 30%-40% commonly seen today in developed western videogame markets.

On September 1 1989, Nintendo switched to fiscal years ending March 1991. The short fiscal year ending March 1990 saw 5.3m NES consoles shipped to the Americas, but in the full fiscal year ending March 31, 1991 Nintendo shipped another 7.6m NES consoles in the Americas. It looks as though the peak NES holiday was 1988 or 1989, while the calendar year peak was 1989.  Kent’s figures, which he claims are Nintendo’s internal numbers, add up to 29.4m NES consoles shipped between September 1, 1986 (when NES went national in the USA) and March 31, 1991. Throw in sales for October 1985 to August 1986, and Nintendo had likely shipped 30m or so NES units in the Americas by March 31, 1991, which ties in nicely with the 28m in sell through mentioned above (from Highbeam and in other sources) in the USA through December 31, 1990.

While 1990 was still a good year for NES in the USA, in 1991 Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo were becoming established machines and many gamers were moving on. By 1993, the NES was all but dead in the Americas as the Super Nintendo and Genesis machines were peaking. However, the NES is still the third most successful console of all time in the Americas. PS1 was the first console to top it in the America, early in the 2000s.

Estimates of how yearly and worldwide NES sell through functioned over time can be seen below. Despite relatively tiny sales in Europe and other places not in the Americas or Japan, the NES likely sold close to 13,000,000 units in a year (to gamers, not to stores) due to its nearly monopolistic status in Japan and the USA. For context, in the year ending March 2009, Sony only expects PSP, a successful platform in all three markets, to ship 15 million units, which, all things being equal, will likely mean about 13.5m PSPs will reach the homes of gamers. PS3 is expected to ship 10 million units in the same period. Microsoft’s best Xbox 360 year was the year ending June 30, 2008 when it shipped 8.7m Xbox 360s. The only platforms ever with better combined USA+Japan sales than NES to date are PS1, PS2, GBA
Figure 1 : NES Sell through Estimates by Year

While Nintendo would not provide a shipment breakdown for the NES period, the sell through vs. shipped pattern likely looks like the chart below given that we do have sources which put global NES shipments (including Famicom) at 40m in March 1990, and 48m in March 1991. When looking at the chart note below, which details the image above, note that a) through 1989, Nintendo financial years ended August 31 , b) Nintendo had a seven month fiscal “year” in 1990, when its financial year changed from September to August to April to March . As a result, the year ending March 1990 is only seven months , c) figures for sell through are calendar years, while shipment figures end either August 31 (1982-1989) or March 31 (1990-).
J-D Year****
Worldwide LTD Sales
FY LTD for Au/Mar
FY LTD Shipments ***

1982
0
1982
0

1983
800,000
1983
500,000

1984
2,100,000
1984
3,000,000

1985
4,190,000
1985
5,000,000

1986
8,090,000
1986
9,500,000

1987
15,590,000
1987
17,500,000

1988
25,390,000
1988
27,000,000

1989
37,740,000
1989*
35,000,000

1990
47,790,000
1990***
40,250,000

1991
53,140,000
1991**
48,400,000

1992
56,490,000
1992
54,000,000

1993
58,590,000
1993
59,993,000

1994
59,855,000
1994
61,030,000

1995
60,570,000
1995
61,420,000

1996
61,030,000
1996
61,500,000

1997
61,275,000
1997
61,600,000

1998
61,450,000
1998
61,680,000

1999
61,560,000
1999
61,750,000

2000
61,640,000
2000
61,800,000

2001
61,710,000
2001
61,840,000

2002
61,770,000
2002
61,875,000

2003
61,820,000
2003
61,900,000

2004
61,860,000
2004
61,910,000

2005
61,890,000
2005
61,910,000  
2006
61,905,000
2006
61,910,000  
2007
61,910,000
2007
61,910,000  

**** Jan to Dec Year

* FY ends Aug 31

**FY ends Mar 31

***FY = 7 months.


Clearly Wii and DS are trending well above the other consoles. However, by the standards of later Nintendo machines, the NES was a huge success. SNES is not included in the comparison (though it would likely look like a blend of the NES & N64 lines) because we have yet to research its early years in the way we have for NES. N64, GC, GBA, DS, and Wii shipment figures are readily available on Nintendo’s IR site. The 26.5m Wii point for FY3 and the 30.5m DS point for FY5 are based on Nintendo's shipment projections for the year ending March 31, 2009.

How the Wii Evolved from NES Failures & DS Successes

The region a and region b split was the biggest failure of Nintendo in the NES era. While information on the split is difficult to find, Wikipedia claims (which means it could be completely wrong) that region a, comprised mainly of the UK, Ireland, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand areas did not get NES until 1987. Region b, which was the remainder of non-Communist Europe, mostly saw NES in September 1986. Areas that received NES later, including Spain which was an exception in region b, became relatively enamored with the Sega Master System and other machines. Without a “Nintendo of Europe office” and by extension little unified effort, Nintendo never really cemented itself in the European consciousness with NES the way it had in Japan and in the USA.

As a result of this early history, Europe was largely brand agnostic until later products began creating the gaming culture already being established in the USA and Japan via magazines like Nintendo Power and Famitsu. Nintendo’s first major hit in Europe was Gameboy which focused on quick and fun portable experiences. PS1 and PS2 grew dominant in Europe on more graphically advanced versions of relatively simple play, especially in the realm of sports, and action games with more of an arcade focus. With NES less influential, Europe was much more focused on franchises designed or re-imagined in the 32 bit era onwards. For Nintendo, this was a problem, as Mario, Link, Kirby, etc largely were only meaningful characters to those who grew up with them. Additionally, most top 32 bit games were on PS1 due to user base and timing advantages. Since NES shipments reached only 8.56m in Others, it became increasingly clear with each subsequent generation that a Nintendo console based on Nintendo’s characters and fewer and fewer third party games was not enough of a foundation to rise to the top in Europe. Statistics bear this out – SNES had huge third party hits and was viable longer than the Genesis but it still only out shipped NES in Others by 20,000, and was outsold by Genesis in Others overall. Nintendo 64 had revolutionary 3D games before PS1 did, but it sold less than PS1 by a huge margin in Others, and less than NES and SNES. Gamecube continued the pattern.

The line of portable success for Nintendo, from Gameboy to Gameboy Advance showed Nintendo could be successful in Europe though. When Sony unveiled the PSP, Nintendo faced the proposition of getting knocked down further by Sony in Europe to a point of irrelevance. Had Sony locked Europe with PSP, Nintendo would have struggled to ever reach its previous peak years of 1987-1992 when NES, Game Boy, and Super Nintendo were all viable at once, facing less competition while simultaneously coexisting as the leading platforms worldwide. However, once the interface experiments on the DS were proven successful, Nintendo decided it could copy the strategy with the Wii. For Europe, this meant defining the platform by a style of play, rather than by a stable of characters, as even icons like Mario, Sonic or Laura Croft lose their luster when they star in crap games or age prematurely as trends change.

Looking back, the NES was successful in USA and Japan because of how it combined new types of control (the D-Pad, power pad, R.O.B., simple buttons compared to rival machines) with a wide array of newly established franchise games. In Europe, the fragmented market, and earlier release of the Sega Master System almost completely negated both advantages. With the Gameboy line, Nintendo had cheap portable games perfect for quick thrills on the go. The controls were simpler to pick up than rival portables, while the low tech graphics were designed to take out the sting of any commercial failure that could happen. With DS reinforcing these truths to Nintendo, and offsetting the more powerful PSP with its larger, more complicated games, and tougher to learn control scheme(s) Nintendo probably knew that Wii would be its most successful console in Europe given that PS3 would be ridiculously expensive at first in Europe ($800+ dollars) and since Xbox 360 was unlikely to be very strong outside the UK. As long as the simpler control scheme caught on, the Wii philosophy was likely to succeed in Europe.

Wii: The NES Rebirth

One of the most often ignored similarities between the Wii era and the NES era is how similar PC gaming was behaving in both times. Right as NES emerged; other videogame machines and PCs were becoming more and more similar. Some Atari games were on PCs, some were on videogame consoles. Nintendo, simply by having the NES run on obsolete graphical power, with a huge base, and exclusive games, single handedly slowed (or even reversed) the movement of PC gaming and console gaming toward one single point. Had a single unified platform emerged this early, its likely that much of the innovation seen in today’s videogame market would not have developed due to the evils of competitive indifference.

Today, we find a similar scenario with Microsoft and Sony literally running over each other to make gaming consoles “media center” PCs to try to knock off television and other potential threats from nowhere that impact the non-gaming aspects of their business (Linux on every PS3, 360 sales leading HD-DVD to triumph would have been major threats). In the chase to make consoles more media centric than ever, they have actually become increasingly unnecessary. Identity is central to videogame machines. Historically, a platform has to be top in portable game selection, mainstream local gaming, or high end gaming to succeed. Sales, design choices, and the development limitations of each platform have made DS, Wii and PC as the leaders of those categories, which is a major shift from last generation when the main advantages the three consoles used to have over PCs was a superior mainstream local gaming experience (Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, DDR, etc). Now, only Wii fits what most people want in local social interaction because most top Wii games involve physical interaction between player, friend, and game.

A subset in the industry continues to exist for players who want nothing but the latest iteration of series x with prettier graphics, but that development is somewhat akin to movie studios making only blockbuster action movies with similar plotlines and avoiding “art house” or “oscar” films. One big issue with gaming is that there seems to be confusion that blockbuster game makers think they are art house game makers. In truth, there really aren’t commercially viable art house games on consoles. Ironically then, trying to make consoles into media hubs pushes gamers away, since PC handles the high end functionality better,  works better as a non-gaming media hub and as “ a gaming movie theatre” in terms of providing variable (and often free) content while Wii has more innovation than all other platforms on the locally based social gaming side at the moment. Functionally, PS3 and Xbox 360 will always be inferior to reasonably priced PCs graphically, but also inferior to DS and PSP in portability, and inferior to Wii in terms of mass-market friendliness since the machines are built for something akin to watered down PC gaming. As long as the boundaries between PC gaming and Xbox 360 & PS3 gaming remain blurry, Wii will function as the NES did for those looking for an experience that can only be found on one device, whether the experience was Mario Brothers back in the day, or Wii Sports now. The best evidence for the uniqueness argument is that the blockbusters that come from new genres and only exist on one platform are always the top sellers, regardless of what the platform is. PS2 had GTA, Wii has the Wii ____ games, DS has the Training games, Game Boy had Pokemon, NES had Mario Brothers, Genesis had Sonic, etc.

The implications for all of this come down to the business ecosystems of a platform. NES sales began to falter when SNES and Genesis could do everything NES could, but in an expanded and more beautiful way with new games. The change in functionality does not come instantly – Genesis for one had a terrible worldwide debut in 1988 and 1989 simply because regardless of the advanced features, the NES library was still better. In 1990, NES outsold Genesis 14:1 in the USA according to the sources cited above. The reasoning was likely because Genesis still didn’t have defining software. 1991 was the real shift, when new titles Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World made everything on NES begin to look obsolete. Even then, Genesis only outsold NES 3:2 despite the massive NES base in the Americas.

For Wii then, the NES precedent means that until (or unless) Microsoft and/or Sony try to top the motion-sensing functionality of the Wii, it will keep selling in ridiculous volumes. NES lost its luster when it stopped being the console with the most exclusive types of games a given audience wanted. The same will be true for Wii. One major difference though – Sony and Microsoft will likely still sell 120m consoles combined despite the Wii in the current generation. That is down from the 155m or so PS2 + Xbox owners (assume for a moment that most GC owners bought a Wii) but still very viable business. So unlike with Genesis and SNES, where copying NES in a better way was key to survival since the market was smaller, it may not be necessary for Sony and Microsoft to copy Nintendo’s motion sensing innovations if they alter their business models a bit to make more profit on the 120m users they’ll split eventually. While investors may want the growth Wii is currently seeing, following Nintendo’s path with Wii comes with more risks than continuing on the current path Microsoft and Sony are on since the current audience could reject the ‘Wii-ifying’ of their machines in one key measurable metric: fewer game purchases. Since Microsoft and Sony struggle to make money on their hardware, lower attach rates would be a financial travesty for the companies.

If that is the case, Wii should have a shot at the penetration levels DS has in Japan all over the Americas and Europe. NES sold 53m consoles to 390m people in the USA, Canada and Japan. Today, there are 450m people in the USA, Canada and Japan so there should be at least 60m consoles there (PS2 is at 68m or so in the three countries and still growing), and potentially as many as 115m consoles (if the market were to double). Throw in Europe, Latin America, Nintendo’s ambitions for China and other smaller regions, and 200m or more doesn’t look impossible for a lead console anymore though Wii could also sell a lot less. If 200m does seem impossible, just remember the NES precedent. It sold 50m in two countries over twenty years ago, and the market is much bigger now.

神棍的预测 根据fc来估计wii的表现
不过根据图可以看出
wii和ds在相同的周期内
wii一直比ds卖得好

07年日本的FC 还在卖了5000台……
可惜全球不能过亿，无法超越PS的辉煌

TAT小霸王为啥不算进去

ps出了PSONE
FC当时太厚道了。没出改良机型
不过老任的机器也没啥好改良的，除了万恶的NDS

引用:

原帖由 Leny 于 2008-9-19 17:26 发表
07年日本的FC 还在卖了5000台……
可惜全球不能过亿，无法超越PS的辉煌

时代不同，而且PS做到了FC做不到的事，所以没啥

FC当时人口才多少

引用:

原帖由 大头木 于 2008-9-19 23:24 发表
ps出了PSONE
FC当时太厚道了。没出改良机型
不过老任的机器也没啥好改良的，除了万恶的NDS

FC没改良机?你确定?

ps顺应了当时的厂商和制作人的期望所以成功了，属于时势造英雄

而任天堂的fcnds以及wii的成功，就是英雄造时势