This is exactly true. One part of this prediction, that Nintendo will miss their 20 million target, is not an unreasonable claim to make. It is entirely unreasonable to suggest that Switch is on track to ship 8 million units this year; it's a disingenuous claim which ignores seasonal sales trends and ignores that the current 5% shipment decline year-over-year would have to become a 45% decline in order for this claim to hold any merit. Even if you extrapolated from the first quarter shipments that Switch will be down 5% year over year, that would still leave Switch on track to 14.8 million units for the financial year.

He's deliberately framed a reasonable prediction with an eye-catching figure to rile people and generate hits. He's also vague about Nintendo's strategy and sales targets - he suggests that Nintendo have no strategy despite the success of Switch so far, mentions price as a major issue and argues Nintendo will miss 20 million "by a mile". What, exactly, is "a mile" in this context? Anything below 16 million would clearly be a disappointment; anything over 18 million would have to be seen as a success, I'd argue. Let's not forget Pachter said very similar things 18 months ago before Switch launched - he predicted 1 million shipments for launch and 5 million shipments for the first full financial year; needless to say, he was way off on both counts.

Q1 of this year was weak for Switch, but Holiday season for Nintendo always have effect on sales in Q1. Game releases definatly have effects on Switch sales, Switch sales are on rise in June and July compared to slower April and May.

Everyone writing things, nobody responding to what he actually said. He said something completely non-controversial. He said it is tracking 8m, so 20m will be very hard to sell without a price drop. Tracking is a linear projection, and he's right.

He never made a prediction for 8m sales, he said it is currently tracking 8m. He made no prediction. Just suggests that 20m is very unlikely.

I get what you are saying, but I disagree with you. Yes, OP posted an article from a biased source that disagrees with Pachter. Pachter must very well know that the Switch is on track to sell much more than 8 million units in the fiscal year.

Words were twisted, etcetera, etcetera, but surely when determine what a system is tracking to sell, one would take into account months of the year that typically sell five times what other months do.

You're sounding like an apologist. Saying that "2 million this quarter is tracking to 8 million over the next year) is the same as saying that a 12 million Christmas quarter is tracking to 48 million for the next year.

Switch is currently tracking toward a 17-18 million year when you count in the proper weights of quarterly sales; even using weights is inaccurate since Nintendo under-shipped the Switch in Q1 on account that they sold an estimated 700,000 more units than they shipped.

He's just a shit analyst when it comes to videogames.

The fact is Nintendo Labo bombed and many analysts were attributing the bullish expectations Nintendo set up for the fiscal year to that release. There is plenty of sense, and I agree, Nintendo will not hit their target estimates. Furthermore, without a price cut I think they will be not even close to hitting the expected sales figures. 

So I don't think it's just wild speculation on his part, but yeah people love to make mountains out of molehills when actually something pretty uncontroversial was said (and factual too). He's not saying Nintendo will only sell 8M, rather that they are on track to that figure based on the recent sales numbers and extrapolating based on that. Probably a more complete answer would be "Nintendo tracking to 8M, meaning it's very unlikely they will hit the 20M estimates they set out at the start" (don't remember if it was 20M, but it was somewhere around there).

Quite the opposite actually, IIRC, he had his doubts about it from the start and later "predicted" 20M lifetime.

I used to watch him back in Gametrailers days in Pach Attack and when he was guest in Bonus Round, he is well spoken and fairly entertaining guy, but lot of things he says are on purpose to generate buzz and he indeed likes to troll Nintendo fans from time to time (though his household has plenty of Nintendo consoles). This particular time I think most people just misunderstood what tracking means - though he indeed didn't go into details and holiday season, so that's on him.

Seems like by usual Patcher correction formula Switch will hit it's 20M target.

That's the thing, he's not extrapolating based on the Q1 numbers because then he would get to something like Asriel's 14.8 million figure. He basically took Q1 times 4 which is a worthless number. That's like saying the PS4 is on track for 12 million sold and will miss their 17 million target by a lot when all signs point to Sony easily making their projection.

No, Switch did ship 15.05M in FY3/2018 in addition to the 2.74M in FY3/2017.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/number.html