glad some people have enjoyed it. it's been woeful for me, not one game i wanted for the system for 8 months.

Hey, look at that! I got a remark! :D

Simply put, it was bad.
Not awful. Just bad.

The only reason it's not awful is because Switch is a success.
If it wasn't - and it wasn't expected to be when last year and this year's line-up was being planned - people wouldn't too happy about it.

Quantity and diversity are important when buying a console, but the main reason are those big titles.
And this year you'll have one (Smash) and another one that is not garanteed to be a big title (Pokémon).

So, again, Nintendo needed more titles for this year (not less as we saw).
I don't know nearly enough to talk about sales, but from what i have been Reading, the latest HW numbers were a let down. They also show that the hybrid concept alone isn't enough to sell big numbers.

I said it before and i'll say it again: Nintendo mismanaged the release Schedule. Period. Had the Switch been just a moderate success and this would be even more clear.
Last year, when i started questioning Nintendo's reveals, i was accused of being pessimistic, of not seeing the facts and how Nintendo operates.
It seems that time showed that Nintendo did not learn from all it's mistakes, after all.

So you are comparing the switch with the wii and thats how you came up with that 2.5 10.5 4 million number? Yet ignore that the wii started the year with a strong 5.1 and 4.9 million while the switch is starting with 1.8 million. I know pokemon and smash are popular but 10.5 seems a tad farfetched. We will see I guess but I would be willing to bet money it will be much lower than that.

1st and 2nd party wise the first half of 2018 was a disappointment. While games like Kirby and Mario Tennis were good. They weren't anything amazing. I thought Nintendo would have a bigger hit but I guess not. They were saving them for the holiday. Oh well. 3rd party wise it was awesome. Tons of indies and A/AA games that came out. Even though a lot of them are coming in June. (Technically 1st half but seriously why was this not spread out?) I feel like 3rd party wise the Switch continues to get better.

Thats all you could come up with for me

Go back two years when the Wii U was a thing, then fast forward to today. The first half of 2018 has been absolutely fine with a steady supply of games. Anybody thinking Nintendo are to be pumping out high quality games at the rate of last year are a bit delusional. The reason we got that great 2017 is because the Wii U took the hit so all focus was on getting a killer line up for Switch.

We will see :)
I even think they can do 11+ for this Q3.
They will make an insane marketing for SSBU with people dancing in the street in New York and so...and trailers every weeks from October.
This was already planned for a while that Nintendo wanted to deliver as much as they could on the first year, and hold with the strict minimum for the 6 first months of 2018 (not fiscal but real year). September is almost here already. We will see massive marketing* for Mario Party, Pokemon and SSBU. And this will work as usual.

*marketing is the key here : with the money they got with Labo and Mario Kart Dx which costed nothing, they have enough for powerfull marketing.

The first half of 2018 was not as well supported as many people hoped coming off of last year bombastic ride.

Really, Nintendo could have pushed for some 2017 titles/rushed some late 2018 games to launch in April/May 2018, since the Nintendo Switch was sold out most of last year anyway.

Last year was like they maxed out the sales they actually had Supply for, and were just wasting their Plus Demand Up tokens (kept adding more good games in 2017), when they could have been saving those for the dry patch that was January through May.

I think the Switch’s momentum was fine for 3 month, but April and May really needed bigger boosting software than it received.

That said, the hard slowdown was thankfully short lived. June and July have really turned things around momentum wise for the Nintendo Switch, due to more desirable games releasing on the system (Nintendo even commented on this change of momentum of June’s hardware sales).

(Personally, I will probably get at least 10 times as many games during June - December this year compared to the dry times that were January - May this year)

I think the lineup for August through December is actually really really good (though Nintendo hasn’t announced everything just yet), and Nintendo must think so to, since they haven’t changed their hardware forecasts.

I just think, if they had spread out the releases better, the momentum into the holidays would have been much stronger, and overall would have had sold more hardware during April through September (Especially if Smash Ultimate was a September title).

Either way, it will be interesting to see what other games get announce between now and New Years.

I dont see any issue with the lineup for the first half of the year except that it lacked a really big system seller but in terns of quality, quantity & diversity its been pretty good.

Ideally I think Nintendo may want to try and aim for one big title every 6 months at minimum. Is it hard? Sure, but no one said this was supposed to be easy.

1H 2019: Animal Crossing Switch (+ Fire Emblem)
2H 2019: Pokemon Gen 8 (+ Mario Maker Switch)

1H 2020: Mario Odyssey 2 + Switch Pro Model (+ Metroid Prime 4)
2H 2020: Zelda: BOTW2 (+ Luigi's Mansion 3)

1H 2021: Donkey Kong Country 3D platformer (+ Paper Mario Switch)
2H 2021: 2D Super Mario Bros. (+ Xenoblade Next)

Then ideally you would also have one smaller scale seller, but something still significant per half too, like Fire Emblem to go with Animal Crossing, Mario Maker with Pokemon Gen 8, Luigi's Mansion 3 to go with Zelda: BOTW2, etc. etc. Of course you have more games overall, but getting a 1/2 punch every 6 months is a decent way to ensure that you're not losing too much momentum.