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Forums - Sales Discussion - How is the Switch going to sell 20M when it only sold 1.88M this quarter?

zorg1000 on 31 July 2018
bananaking21 said:
I don't think they will. However you can't judge a FY's sales based on this quarter alone, which is usually the lowest selling quarter of the year. Nintendo were obviously banking on labo to help the switch keep its momentum but that didn't pan out. Considering they still have the 20 forecast then they are relying on Pokémon and smash and their continued legs through Q4. And of course a price cut.

A price cut in Sept (1.5 years after launch) to build momentum going into the holidays would definitely help, but more likely they will start bundling a multiplayer game (Mario Kart-West, Splatoon-Japan) along with an online subscription trial with a slight chance of extra deals during BF/Xmas.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

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zorg1000 on 31 July 2018
Jranation said:
I've probably asked this many times already. But do we have any updates on the Switch China Release?

Seems like everytime somebody asks at investor/shareholder meetings they just say they are working on it.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

melbye on 31 July 2018

my guess is that they some real faith in Pokemon, Smash and whatever they intend to release in the last fiscal quarter



DonFerrari on 31 July 2018
Ljink96 said:
Nintendo lowballed FY 2017 and overshot their goal. If the same market analysts at Nintendo are making these predictions, I think they'll hit it. There's a lot we don't know about Nintendo's 2nd half of 2018 and first 3 months of 2019.

But I can see both ways, expecting 18 million more Switch units in 9 months is a bit strange. I don't know if they're giving too much credit to Lets Go or what. Analysts are expecting Switch to be the best selling device for the year so Nintendo isn't necessarily alone when they are making these predictions.

I doubted Nintendo the last time that they made the claim of 16M units shipped, and that didn't turn out well for me. I'm hopeful that they do but as of now, it's headache inducing for sure how they'll do it. Let's Go isn't even a real mainline Pokemon game...maybe that helps or hurts their bottom line.

Well Nintendo had overestimated their shipments for 3DS and WiiU several times and even with multiple down revisions...

For the topic in hand I think it will be quite hard to do 20M. And comparing to Wii that probably had the low Q1 due to shortages isn't much parameter on my opinion and even if we use it and instead of just taking 500k of the total make it proportional we see that 18M would be more reasonable to expect.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Jranation on 31 July 2018
zorg1000 said:
Jranation said:
I've probably asked this many times already. But do we have any updates on the Switch China Release?

Seems like everytime somebody asks at investor/shareholder meetings they just say they are working on it.

I hope it is able to make it before Christmas..... and the release of that MOBA game. 



Pocky Lover Boy! 

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GoOnKid on 31 July 2018

I am sceptical, too. 17-18 would be my guess.



StarDoor on 31 July 2018
DonFerrari said:
Ljink96 said:
Nintendo lowballed FY 2017 and overshot their goal. If the same market analysts at Nintendo are making these predictions, I think they'll hit it. There's a lot we don't know about Nintendo's 2nd half of 2018 and first 3 months of 2019.

But I can see both ways, expecting 18 million more Switch units in 9 months is a bit strange. I don't know if they're giving too much credit to Lets Go or what. Analysts are expecting Switch to be the best selling device for the year so Nintendo isn't necessarily alone when they are making these predictions.

I doubted Nintendo the last time that they made the claim of 16M units shipped, and that didn't turn out well for me. I'm hopeful that they do but as of now, it's headache inducing for sure how they'll do it. Let's Go isn't even a real mainline Pokemon game...maybe that helps or hurts their bottom line.

Well Nintendo had overestimated their shipments for 3DS and WiiU several times and even with multiple down revisions...

For the topic in hand I think it will be quite hard to do 20M. And comparing to Wii that probably had the low Q1 due to shortages isn't much parameter on my opinion and even if we use it and instead of just taking 500k of the total make it proportional we see that 18M would be more reasonable to expect.

Wii was not having shortages in the middle of 2009. The reason Q1 had a low shipment number is because Nintendo over-shipped in the previous quarter: They went from 5.43M in Q4 FY 2008 to 2.23M in Q1 FY 2009.



DonFerrari on 31 July 2018
StarDoor said:
DonFerrari said:

Well Nintendo had overestimated their shipments for 3DS and WiiU several times and even with multiple down revisions...

For the topic in hand I think it will be quite hard to do 20M. And comparing to Wii that probably had the low Q1 due to shortages isn't much parameter on my opinion and even if we use it and instead of just taking 500k of the total make it proportional we see that 18M would be more reasonable to expect.

Wii was not having shortages in the middle of 2009. The reason Q1 had a low shipment number is because Nintendo over-shipped in the previous quarter: They went from 5.43M in Q4 FY 2008 to 2.23M in Q1 FY 2009.

Gotcha, my bad then. For me I remembered Wii being supply constrained almost up to its 4th year.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Slarvax on 31 July 2018

Lol
If it sold 2.5 million, it really wouldn't make a difference for a 20m total. Regardless, Sony was too pessimistic, you're right on that.

Edit: I will say, if Switch is down YoY next quarter, then it'll be pretty unlikely they reach 20m. But even then, Q3 is pretty god damn big, specially for Nintendo. So it's not set in stone until the end of the FY. Personally, I'm also expecting a big Q4. They already have a bunch of games scheduled for 2019, so a few should release early on, and Smash releases at the very end of the year, so it should carry momentum towards 2019. Also, we've seen a lot of deals recently in the west, so a price cut/bundle is always on the table.

Last edited by Slarvax - on 31 July 2018

Bet with bluedawgs: I say Switch will outsell PS4 in 2018, he says PS4 will outsell Switch. He's now permabanned, but the bet will remain in my sig.

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Soundwave on 31 July 2018

It's probably not gonna happen, if it does, I think it would be the slowest starting Q1 for any 20 million fiscal year that any company for any hardware ever in the business.

That said something like 18 mill isn't necessarily the end of the world especially if software attach rates continue to be this strong. Nintendo just needs to take the lesson that they can't have weak Q1/Q2 and "experiments" like Labo are alright but this is not the Wii/DS era where you can be banking 6-8 month periods on the success of products like that. Those are not the kinds of games that are going to drive Switch hardware adoption.