I have some speculation based on a comment from Iwata
In October, certain retailers usually start their own, limited weekly-offer type of sales promotions, and they are starting such promotions in the U.S. and in Europe. Whether the consumers actually react to such limited weekly offers or not can tell us a lot and can be our sales indicator for the year-end. If they do not react with significant purchases, we will have to think that Wii and Nintendo DS have little more demand. On the other hand, if three times or even five times as much as the previous week's sales are made as a result of such limited offers, we can conclude that our consumers are actually waiting for some incentives.
By now, we have come to notice that such special offers from retailers have prompted significant increases in the weekly sales, so we are interpreting the current situation as our consumers are patiently waiting, instead of interpreting it as diminishing demand (for Wii and Nintendo DS). I think this is how the difference in expectation can take place between when you estimate the November and December sales based upon the past years' sales trend and when we forecast our sales in this fashion.
Can we expect this type of thing to carry over to maybe WiiWare, DSiWare & 3DSWare? Could we get an environment where every once in a while there are some sales for software to get things moving?
We all know that current WiiWare and VC purchases are not where they should be and Nintendo has no one to blame but themselves because for 1, they don't advertise anything, 2, most of the software is overpriced and 3, nothing ever goes on sale to attract attention to the service and hightlite games that people would enjoy if only they would give them a chance, which would in turn make people check the service more often, even if it's just to see whats on sale.
But anyway, Iwata realizes that having sales is an incentive to push a purchase. Do you think that is where Nintendo is headed in the next round of DD as well as retail purchases? Can we hope for 3DSWare to be more Steam like when it comes to sales that get us to open our wallets and buy games we would otherwise ignore?