Landguy said:
I don't remember saying that Nintendo purposely held back previous launches. I do think the Nintendo would have normally launched their system in November of 2016. But, the decided to avoid the holiday crush which would have sold all of the systems anyway, and waited for march to accomplish just what they did. They can sell 1 more unit than the Wiis launch and claim that it was the "best Launch Ever for Nintendo". To do so, the presells and consumer demad built up even more to ensure they could sell it out on launch week. With the internet world the way it is now, companies products HAVE to have a successful perceived launch in order to make it. Does there have to be demand to accomplish this? Of course, but it is obvious that the worlds population is alomst a billion more than when the Wii launched. Like you said, Nintendo fixed many of the problems from the WiiU and launched the system with a Zelda game(also held back for the launch) to ensure that it would maximize the exposure. |
I think they did say actually after they got stuck with a ton of unsold GameCube inventory that they became very cautious with inventory again.
That was one of the main reasons the Wii was supply restrained so badly early on.
People should just let Switch be its own thing. It's not going to be a Wii, but it's not a Wii U either.
2 million total shipment worldwide for a month was always a relatively small amount factoring in that you are launching with Zelda, that works out to about 650,000 for each major market, probably less because ancilliary markets also have to factor in (ie: US can't just have 650k, some have to go to Canada, Mexico, South America, etc.) ... we know there are at least a good 2-3 million hardcore Nintendo fans in every market minimum, so those systems were always going to go fairly quick with a launch game like Zelda. What happens after that when supply normalizes and the launch honeymoon is kinda over is anyones guess.