Pokemon Let's Go Bundle

What? We're in the middle of the second quarter.

Also, while we don't have much data for Q2 yet, what we do have from Japan has shown increasingly stronger sales, sales have been consistently up 50% over the previous quarter.

Nintendo relies on 1st party games to do system selling, so if they have some BOTW type game coming out for holiday season, then maybe. But I think the xonsole sales will be lower this year because the expectation of the new Sony and MS consoles is starting to build up, and folks wait.

Sony and Microsoft sales don't have much to do with Nintendo.

As a huge Nintendo fan, and someone who thinks we'll have a big holiday, I'm asking the same question. Only if Nintendo is holding a decent exclusive up their sleeve (along with a price cut) do I think they'll achieve those numbers. It's just hard to imagine they'll move 18 million consoles in 9 months.

I they said they'll get 16 million again this year, I wouldn't have batted an eye. 20 million, though... We'll have to see.

A third possibility:

As has been brought up before, they under-shipped in Q1 as sales were quite a bit higher than shipments. Nintendo has been known to ship as little as 5% of their annual shipments during Q1. Q1 + Q2 shipments will give a better picture.

I was predicting a disappointing fiscal year for Nintendo before it began, but now I may have to change my tune.  That's because Smash, by itself, was just not enough to reach 20m, and I knew that there was no way a new mainline Pokemon would come out in 2018.  Well there are three games that surprised me since then.

1) Pokemon Let's Go may not be a mainline Pokemon game, but it is still going to move a lot of hardware.  Pokemon has some really rabid fans.  There are people out there that just buy a system for the Pokemon games and nothing else.  These people will get this Let's Go game, and there are also going to be some converts from Pokemon Go.  This game will move hardware.

2&3)  I didn't think of Fortnite coming to Switch, nor did I foresee how successful Octopath Traveler was going to be.  Fortnite is just frikken huge and Switch is really the ideal platform to play it on.  Octopath will probably be the best selling title on the Switch released between April-September this year.  These games totally fill the gaps that Switch had in its first party lineup.  And then Mario Party, Pokemon Let's Go, and Smash will come out at the end of the year for a strong finish.  I was expecting Switch to lose momentum, but now I see that it isn't going to.

Will Switch reach 20m this fiscal year?  Not sure, but if it doesn't it will come really close.

PS5 and Scarlet are far far away, and the overall market, the ones that are not forum dwellers, dont even know that they are (most likely) comming 2020.

Considering that at this point in time both DS and 3DS received their first major hardware revisions, plus price cuts and with Switch we've seen none of that, it leaves plenty of room to improve sales for Nintendo.