Switch has sold 1.5m units (Superdata)

[Arkaign]

This is pretty expected I think. The numbers could be 20-25% higher perhaps if they had more on hand to get into stores. I'm not 100% sure what the holdup is, could be a number of things, suppliers of batteries, screens, PCBs, who knows. Given how easily the first batch sold, obviously more could have sold if they were available.

Now the truly interesting thing will be how it plays out from here. How long they stick to $299 with no game. I think it's overpriced for what it is (IMHO), especially for those who don't care whatsoever that it's portable. I had a 3DS, and even that was something I rarely took anywhere, because I already carry a laptop most places, and my smartphone, so another device to lug around is not ideal. I'm busy, and having game time pop up is extremely rare when I'm out and about. Obviously if I had a long bus/train ride in my commute it might be different. As it is, I drive a long way to and from here and there, and I spend that listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Can't (shouldn't) game and drive lol.

So it was marketed much more smartly than the WiiU, which was a textbook example of how NOT to market a console. Even the infamously rough start to Xbox One was far superior to the launch of WiiU, the name of WiiU, the lack of any 'headliner' type game for WiiU's launch (no mainline Mario, no Zelda, no Kart, no Smash, no Metroid, pretty much a wasteland for launch, at a pretty substantial price.

So WiiU launch :

Price 2/10

Game Selection 2/10

Marketing 0/10

vs Switch Launch

Price 2/10 (this doesn't affect the hardcore fans, which also bought PS3 at $599, Xbox One at $499, etc, but which aren't 'mass market success' type prices)

Game Selection 5/10 (Zelda BOTW, yes it's cross-gen port-up, but a real new Zelda never hit WiiU, and I imagine many Zelda fans and nostalgia types who remember Ocarina/etc might be some that jumped in for that ONE game)

Marketing 7/10

$299 gameless I think won't fly for the holidays, and will really hold them back from momentum moving forward. $249 with a game could move the needle a bit, but $199 is really what they need to hit, game or no. PS4 Slim and X1-S will be $199 most likely this holiday season, as they're already de-facto $250 w/game if one is willing to look. Yes, the Switch is portable, but an expensive portable is not a great long-term plan either. $200 is a magic price barrier for consumers that they should aim for.

It has already been confirmed with de-lidding and die examination that this thing has a vanilla Tegra X1 Maxwell in there, so the thing will absolutely suffer from 3rd party support in the AAA league. Games will either be missing (most of the time), or incredibly downgraded ports in the event that a port is even made. As mediocre as the raw GPU and CPU power are for the Switch, what's even worse relatively speaking is the memory bandwidth. 25.6Gbps. Why is this bad? Well, for one thing, that's the EXACT memory bandwidth of the PS3, which launched ELEVEN FREAKING YEARS AGO.

How does this compare?

PS3 25.6Gbps
X360 22.4Gbps (+ tiny 256Gbps eDRAM)
Wii 1.9Gbps (lol)
WiiU 12.8Gbps (+ 32MB eDRAM at ~500gbps)
PS4 176Gbps
PS4 Pro 218Gbps
Xbox One 68.3Gbps (+ 32MB SRAM at 204Gbps)
Xbox One S 68.3Gbps (+ 32MB SRAM at 219Gbps)
Xbox Scorpio (???)

Given that, we're not going to be seeing games like Red Dead 2017, Mass Effect Andromeda, Call of Duty, Battlefield, GTA6, Shadow of War, etc on Switch. Even games like Fifa, Madden, etc, will be downgraded versions that look somewhere between WiiU and Xbox One 2013 levels (and given the lack of bandwidth, probably on the low side of that scale to be honest).

That's NOT the end of the world, but it means that the library will need huge support from Nintendo and Japanese devs AND a good mass-market price. They need to be chasing the GB and DS formula, not trying to take on PS4/X1, which will be a failure for sure. Nothing can make the Switch a AAA multiplat box. It's just not competitive. Let's put it this way : if Switch launched in 2013 against PS4/X1, it would have been pretty weak even then. In 2017 against massive libraries, experienced devs, fine tuned online support and established friends lists, it's just .. not that kind of device.

The paid online thing to me is a mistake IMHO, even if the price isn't exorbitant per se. They won't be stealing customers from Sony or MS, but they CAN win people over as a companion gaming device, and lowering the cost and convenience barriers as much as possible would help.

It'll be interesting to see. They need to keep an eye on things though. The instant supply catches up, they need to watch the flow. Once these things start to sit on store shelves and weekly sales are starting to sink low, they need to realize that there are a very limited number of people overall willing to pay $299 for a gameless console. People that want mobility will be the easiest sells.

Also in the future they need to think hard about getting a dedicated home version out there for a really low price. Tegra X1 is ancient and should be dirt cheap. The ram they're using would be embarassed to be seen even on a potato $59 video card, the storage is miniscule, etc. Even today a $99 version without a screen would probably STILL be profitable for them. Right now it would be counterproductive while they soak the diehard fans, but as they go down the line they need to keep up with things to keep the userbase growing steadily.

People stop buying in big numbers at $299, lower the price to $249 and throw a game in.
People stop buying in big numbers at $249 bundle, bring out a $199 SKU.
People stop buying in big numbers at $199, lower to $179 with a new game.
And around that time, also bring out a $129 screenless version, along with a new smaller all-in-one handheld version that is about 3DSXL sized.