kame-sennin said:
So the only options here are:
1) The shocking Dec 09 sales were driven primarily by Wii Sports/Wii Fit/Mario Kart customers who felt $250 was too much for said software.
2) The shocking Dec 09 sales were driven primarily by customers who wanted NSMBW.
3) The shocking Dec 09 sales were due to the biggest sales month of the year finally having the most sought after in previous years device finally in stock. (+ a price drop) (+ desirable software, of which NSMB Wii was an important one, along with Wii Fit/Plus and Wii Sports)
Did you go back and do the exercise I suggested? U.S. is a very different market than Japan when it comes to hardware impacts due to specific software titles.
Edit:
Looking further...
October 2009 was the highest October on record for a home console (excluding Wii's previous year sales
which cannot be considered since the system sold what it shipped. Period.) was PS2's sales in October 2002, the year of its first price cut. It was also PS2's best year. That November 2002 sales for PS2 were 1.28m. The top software was Vice City at 1.45m. You may try to make a case that the PS2's sales were propelled due to Vice City, and you'd at least be somewhat correct. Strong selling software does help hardware sales. However, Vice City also sold 1.41m in the last week of October that year, when it sold 517K. Therefore, it is obvious that sales go up in November from October as a matter of course. This can be strongly helped by being a popular system with an appealing lineup, but sales would still go up.
Now Vice City sold 1.58m in December of that year, not outstandingly higher than it sold in November. Therefore, if PS2 sales were primarily driven by the software, we'd expect a result ~125% of November's sales (due to the extra week). Sales were actually 2.7m for PS2 that December (the previous home console record before the Wii). Where'd the extra sales come from? Obviously it's the fact that its December. December is far and away the biggest selling month of the year in the U.S. (and worldwide, for that matter). Gift giving is big.
Now the price drop for PS2 was > 6 months prior,
but this was the first December that had happened at that price. We know from experience that December is a different month than all the others when it comes to sales. More sales are concentrated there than any other month. Therefore, it makes sense that many people, even though the price had been lower for > 6 months prior, would only have been considering a purchase of a PS2 at that point of the year and not elsewhere. PS2 hadn't had hardware shortages the year before, so it was not its first December being shortage-free. It would later have a December (in 2004*) with San Andreas that was selling even more than Vice City was from October to December. But 2002 was its by far best-selling December.
Was it supported by strong software? Certainly.
Was it the strong software that alone spurred it to such great heights? Certainly not, or we would've seen repeat performances.
My opinion of December 2009's Wii sales follow this order of importance.
1) First shortage-free December. (As shown above, there are a lot of people who only really look to buy a console at this time of year.)
2) Price drop that year. (As shown above, a price drop, even months earlier, can still have an impact in December due to those people who only look to buy a console at that time.)
3) Software lineup. (No matter what your price (looking at you GameCube), you can't have record-breaking Decembers without the software to back it up. Wii had this software long before NSMB Wii (e.g. Wii Sports, Wii Fit), but NSMB Wii certainly helped take it to another level.)
As far as relative importance, it'd be like 1 >>> 2 > 3. First shortage-free December was the real kicker. Price drop helped. Wal-Mart sale helped (though NPD not directly tracking Wal-Mart makes me suspicious, but Pachter would probably know more about that than me, and he kept bringing it up.). Software was the basis that had made the system a sell-out 2.5 years after launch, so that was obviously there and helping, too.
I don't like that you keep trying to ignore December's impact. I have no problem saying that NSMB Wii (along with the rest of the lineup) was a big help, but saying that it was primarily NSMB Wii (ignoring December and the rest of the lineup) seems very, very wrong to me.
* 2004 was the PS2 shortage period as they switched to the PS2 Slim, so its sales need to be considered in that light. However based on the December's around that, it seems reasonable to hold that 2004 wouldn't have outsold 2002's December.