thats Japan only and doesnt compare with shipment data.

Wii didn't have a big first month shipment in the US so using that as a first month barometer for anything is no big deal. 476k NPD for Wii versus 425k NPD for Wii U. The GameCube sold over 662k its first November beating both the Wii and Wii U. 

I'm saying you can't literally take Famitsu/MC as absolute sell through, they don't literally count every copy sold, you have to assume if you're talking shipped versus sold it's fair to say you should assume there is going to be some discrepancy between tracked numbers and actual sell through. That's just a fact. 

Switch will do better than the Wii U for a variety of reasons and should do better than the 3DS early on (though lifetime wise who knows) because mainly Nintendo wasn't dumb enough to bank on the casual audience to carry their launch. If Switch's launch title was Nintendogs + Cats instead of Zelda: BotW I don't care what the hardware is, it would be collecting dust on storeshelves right now. Didn't you say that dual analog = death to sales? Looks to me like Switch is a dual analog system, hell the logo is even dual analog. 

And it is a soft launch mainly designed to finish this fiscal year with some positive news for investors. Selling the first 2 million units is easy with at least one must have game for enthusiast gamers, and it makes for a good story to shareholders especially in the light of Nintendo getting locked out of a big majority of Pokemon Go profits (dumb move to give Niantic the publishing rights). They need to have positive PR for Kimishima's early time as president to maintain trust of shareholders, setting a low target and then exceeding said target by a bit makes for a good PR sales pitch to investors. 

Virtually anything could beat the Wii U's launch, it was a terribly handled launch that again tried to cash in on casuals and failed miserably when people got sick of 2D Mario and Nintendo's other big hope -- the mini-game collection Nintendo Land failed to be a hit. The Wii U did still sell 2.17 million give or take in about a month. So if the shipment for Wii U during that time was only 2 million flat, there would have been a full sell out and even shortages in places. 

The margin of error could be 5% sure, we don't know absoultely, I'm just saying if you're making an absolute statement like X number was sitting unsold on storeshelves, it's hard to know that for sure if you want to use it as an absolute to calculate things like percentages from. There are often 5+% variances just between trackers (Media Create, Famitsu, etc.)

I've said for two years now Nintendo was trying to launch the NX for holiday 2016. Obviously they failed to do so, like the person who is always late. The next "deadline" for them was March year end, they did get to that one, the reason why March is important is because if they miss March too they miss the fiscal year entirely and miss a valuable oppurtunity to deliver some PR spin to investors. 

Well done thread, OP. Too bad Media Create is completely useless(!) so it's an entirely untrue summation of the situation.

hahaha all of a sudden Media Create & NPD aren't reliable sources.

and thank you, give credit to rol as well for telling me how to make tables, ive been on this site for like 5 years and had no idea

updated with Switch data