Keep in mind that shipments aren't sales. When a console is popular like the Switch, it's production (rather than sales) that's generally the bottleneck on shipments. There's not much reason that Nintendo would "miss their target" and ship 18 or 19 million instead of 20 million if there aren't any production issues and they say they're shipping 20 million.

Speaking of shipments, anyone else find it odd they dont sell game consoles in as many places as before?? I remember buying my PS2 at Savon pharmacy (now CVS) back in the day. I also remember places like Sears, Kmart, JCPenney, etc; selling consoles. I assume the emergence of online commerce is the reason?

I'd say there's still the same number of places, only that they changed. Back then, there wasn't a large number of places that focused on electronics and videogames, but they are much more frequent now. You are also right about the online retail space being a major factor too... though I believe most people still purchase electronics in person.

No, with the recent numbers we have now the Switch is not performing well enough in sales to meet its manufacturer's shipment target ...

As it is now the Switch is projected to ship ~9-10M units for fiscal Q3 which will put it just under 15M units shipped with a quarter left to spare. It's going to be very hard to convince retailers to accept what is likely an extra 1.5M units of the system on top of their existing inventory ...

The latest I can find is their consolidated financial highlights report from October 30th where they reported no changes to their shipment schedule. Do you have any links where they say otherwise?

Well there's still the possibility that Europe and RoW are undertracked, though I agree that it's getting increasingly difficult to reach the target

I don't think that's what he's saying.

Based on the sell through numbers we have gotten so far this quarter, it looks like Switch will ship something like 9-10 million this quarter which would put fiscal year shipments around 15 million with one quarter to go.

Q4 of last fiscal year was just under 3 million so something like 3.5 million seems likely this year. This would put total fiscal year shipments at ~18 million give or take.

It's hard to say for sure at the moment since we dont know yet how big December sales are outside of Japan and we dont know how post-holiday momentum will look either or what the software lineup looks like for Feb/March.

I think 19m is more likely. But then again, Switch always has always surprised us, so I'll definitely wait for the January reports before making any judgments.

With what we know now at the moment, I'm not sure if Nintendo will reach their shipment goal for hardware, but it'll likely be close.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate appears to not only breaking series records and showing why it's one of Nintendo's biggest franchises and the biggest video game crossover we will ever see, but it's also doing its part in moving hardware. We've seen the last couple of weeks that Smash Bros. Ultimate is a significant driver in hardware sales in Japan (not sure how significant it will be in the US and Europe, but it should be great).

Plus, Pokemon Let's Go appears to be holding its own, especially as being mainly a remake of Pokemon Yellow and not a new generation game. The Poke Ball accessory should net some nice additional income for Nintendo, Game Freak, and the Pokemon Company.

Super Mario Party is a surprise hit, as well. While I'm sure most of expected respectable sales for the game, as it's still Mario Party, the game appears to be doing more than it's fair share of appealing new Switch owners. Plus, the Black Friday Joy Con bundle appears to have done wonders. It doesn't hurt that the game itself is considered a well-done, back-to-basics game that brings back old fans who may have fallen out of love with the series.

Then you got the evergreen titles that continue to sell. Hell, even Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has managed to get back into the top 30 of the eshop (US, at least) after being out of the rankings for almost a year.

I've been saying they won't ship 20m since about a year ago, but now I am ready to eat my words. I made that statement thinking there would be no mainline Pokemon game this year. And while there technically wasn't, they released something close enough that is selling extremely well. Also their third party games have been performing better this year than I expected, and they have a strong quarter coming up with the port of NSMB U.

If they don't ship, 20m then they are going to get really close.