And with the people acting as if Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc. are also needed within the first year, that would make it even more front-loaded as those games won't be able to prop up sagging quarters beyond. Luckily, I don't think Nintendo will end up doing that.

Absolutely. Some seem to fail to realize this.

It's not on everyone's mind, but it doesn't really need to be yet.  The initial adopters were going to be hardcore gaming fans, and particularly hardcore Nintendo fans.   We'll see at E3 if they have some more mass market titles on the way, and advertising will ramp up as Christmas approaches.

The number I believe is about the same as Sony is planning for the PS4, and the two systems have been selling around the same amount.  So, it seems to be a pretty reasonable figure.

Like i said to kerotan just before, we dont even have most of our system sellers. It just looks like it. MH/MK/DQ (in japan) are all ports. And even if pokemon comes out, it wont be gen 8 (stars aka a port)

Yep. There is still Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, 2D Mario, 3D Zelda, Pokémon, Mario Kart 9, etc. coupled with tons of mid sized stuff like possibly 2D Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, 5 million Mario Spin Offs, Fire Emblem, Luigi's Mansion, WarioWare, Pikmin, etc, etc. 

Nintendo has proven that they cannot accurately gauge demand for their hardware. So, I don't know that this means much.

Well, no.It was the combination of a good concept and execution( hardware) with one excellent software(Zelda) that sold the system.The hardware alone would have never sold this much.

It obviously would have sold less, Zelda is a massive killer app, but it still would have sold a lot without it. Like you said, the concept and execution was there. Zelda was just the gateway, but it could have been a much smaller franchise like F-Zero or something, and it would have still done exceptionally at launch. Same with the PS4. At launch, there weren't a lot of worthwhile games, but people wanted PS4's, so they just dealt with it. Same with the 360.

Most people at launch didn't buy the Switch because they wanted to play Zelda. They wanted to play on the Switch, and got to play Zelda because of it. IMO, if you're buying the Switch in the first 6 months, you just want a Switch, and are using whatever game you get as an excuse to get one. It's not exactly bursting with software yet.

So the shortages will continue until next year at least.

There's no way you'll be able to find a Switch around the Christmas period even at its current price. A price drop this year would be madness. I expect a Mario Kart bundle that is the same price as the Switch + game combined, for convenience.

Also I don't see how Nintendo can produce that many units for this financial year unless they start stepping up the production REALLY soon - as every week passes, it becomes more difficult to hit this goal.