So... Will Nintendo be able to ship those 20 million Switch units?

[Bofferbrauer2]

RolStoppable said:
It has been clear since the announcement of Pokémon and Super Smash Bros. bundles in September that Nintendo will prioritize profits over hardware unit sales this fiscal years. Nintendo should comfortably meet and exceed their forecasts for profits and software sales, so falling a bit short on hardware sales isn't going to be a big deal. And they will fall short, because Switch isn't looking like it will ship 11.5m and 3.5m in the final two quarters.

We are still waiting for a lot of sales data from North America and Europe, but holiday sales have been strong across the globe, so shipments for Q3 of this fiscal year should be 10m+. Q4 shouldn't have a problem to at least match the previous year, because Pokémon and SSB will still be fresh and NSMBU Deluxe releases in January; it's reasonable to expect 3m+ for the quarter, bringing the total to a minimum of 18m. Said 18m will put Switch ahead of PS4 once again.

First full fiscal year:
PS4 - 14.8m
Switch - 15.05m

Second full fiscal year:
PS4 - 17.7m ($50 price cut)
Switch - 18m+

Realistically, the worst case for Switch is that it only matches the PS4 and it does that without a price cut.

Considering that Switch won't fall far short of the forecast, a price cut in October to $250/€250/25k yen would have certainly made 20m attainable. But missing that target isn't a serious cause for concern when full context is being applied.

I can agree for the 11.5M in the 3rd quarter being probably a miss, but 3.5M in the last quarter doesn't seem out of reach at all to me. Switch shipped about 3M last year in that quarter, with some increased momentum through Smash & Pokemon plus some releases (NSMBUDx among others, and I expect Yoshi to release in March to keep it up), 3.5M doesn't seem out of reach at all to me for the 4th quarter.