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Soundwave on 27 March 2017
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RolStoppable said:
zorg1000 said:

no it didnt, it shipped 3.06 million in a month but was waaaayyyyyy overshipped.

Shipments as of Dec 31, 2012-3.06 million

Sell through as of Dec 29, 2012-2.17 million

Sell through as of June 29, 2012-3.06 million

There was close to 1 million units on shelves after the first month and it took an extra 6 months to sell them all.

It's so funny that people still say that the Wii U had a great launch. Iwata's official statement back then was "not bad" which shows how bad it really was. He couldn't even call it good.

Now that we are approaching April and Switch still hasn't dropped off a cliff (you know, some people here really predicted Switch would do worse than Wii U), we are going into the phase of "it was always obvious that Switch would do well in March and April." Doomsday will probably get postponed on a monthly basis.

In any case though, it looks safe to say now that Switch won't follow the trajectory of 3DS and Wii U. Wii U was really bad for a holiday launch, the 3DS lost steam after a month, so by the time it launched in America and Europe (March 2011), it already didn't look good anymore in Japan (February 2011 launch).

It's too early to say anything. 

2 million for worldwide launch is what Nintendo is saying they have for the Switch launch, which is low. Both the Wii U and 3DS would've sold 2 million in a month as well with a worldwide launch, probably GameCube as well. My guess is they will ship just a little more than 2 mill so they can say "we overperformed our expectations with Switch!" it's a nice spin for the fiscal year end investor's report and will soften the blow that Mario Run didn't meet their revenue expectations. 

Since Nintendo is also conditioning their fan base to have to buy early due to shortages of many products they release (Amiibo, NES Classic, etc.), we're going to need to see stock normalize and oppurtinistic scalpers also get out of the way before having a clearer picture. 

The big advantage the Switch has is it's not relying on the unreliable Touch Generations/casual crowd, with a legit AAA game like Zelda, one of the best game's Nintendo has ever made, Switch has a huge advantage over 3DS which Nintendo banked on Nintendogs + cats being a hit with casuals, and it wasn't. Same with NSMBU and Nintendo Land for Wii U.