Wii U Expected To Ship 5.5 Million Units In First Year

The Wii U is really making the rounds in the news today, as additional stories have surfaced indicating production outlines for the future of Nintendo's console and just how many units the head honchos at the Big 'N' are expecting to get out to retailers around the globe for the first year of the Wii U's life-cycle.

According to Nintendo Everything, Nintendo's head honcho Satoru Iwata talked briefly about pre-orders for the Wii U during the company's investment meeting recently, saying...

...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.

GameStop started the waiting list for the Wii U back in September after initial pre-orders exceeded expectations and estimated supplies.

Nintendo and other analysts are expecting shortages of the Wii U, just like with the launch of the Wii back in 2006. Nintendo's manufacturing supplier, Foxconn, tried to find an equilibrium for the production shortage by bringing in underage workers. This resulted in a rather sour media backlash for The Big 'N'.

Nevertheless, Iwata goes on to say that they are expecting to move at least 5.5 million stock keeping units throughout the first fiscal year of the Wii U's shelf life, which is just 340,000 SKUs shy of the Wii's 5.84 million mark back when it first launched with Iwata saying...

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.

The Wii U will also mark a financial challenge for Nintendo, as they recently confirmed that the system will sell at a loss.

Given the strong casual appeal of Nintendo's products, including their entire handheld brand, it's more than likely that the company will come out strong with the launch of the Wii U. With a sturdy launch line-up and a lot of third-party support this time around, Nintendo could be in it for the long haul, assuming they can stay away from more child labor scandals.

The Nintendo Wii U is expected to arrive this November for North American and European markets and will launch in early December for Japan.