nemo37 said:
While I do agree that it is early days, and launch sales are not necessarly a good benchmark for a how system will do in the long term. I will say that disagree with your assertion that demand is disappearing. Sales have gone down because Nintendo had about 2.5 million units ready for launch and they have gone through that. Hence, the system is currently supply constrained. The PS4's sales also dropped dramatically the week after its launch as well (for the week of 23rd of November, a week after launched, it sold below XOne, 3DS, PS3, X360, Wii U), similar to how Switch has declined due to supply constraints. |
I'm responding to your response rather than the argument of declining demand for the Switch that is based upon faulty logic. So for clarification, I agree with what you're saying and just don't want to inadvertently troll a unsubstantiated assertion in the case of Superman4.
The assumption that available supply equals consumer demand isn't an argument that gets pitched around much on VGC because it's not an argument that holds validity. We all know from the Wii and Wii Fit this isn't the case, not that Nintendo is the only company that has managed to botch consumer demand projections for new products. That said, they did manage to do it again with the NES Classic and rather unappologetically.
Supply overstock or a flooded market is an indicator of lower consumer demand relative to supply, but the inverse of that argument doesn't hold the same truth, particularly when the product in question experiences a complete sell out of initial stock.
I haven't seen a single NES Classic ever, because they never stay on shelves. At best, they get snatched up at retail and flipped on EBay at vastly inflated prices. Does this mean a zero supply at retail equals zero demand at retail? We all know the answer to that.
With regards to the Switch, even with the recent big shipment that was distributed among retailers and the subsequent flood of Ebay auctions, it still goes for about $100 over retail, indicating demand higher than current supply.
So we can revisit the demand argument for the Switch once they are readily available on retail shelves and flipping them on Ebay no longer becomes profitable, but not not before.
Mario Kart adds a bit of an added bump to demand, or maybe just serves to keep current owners satisfied with more than just Zelda, but the Switch still benefits from the push of its perceived high demand relative to lower supply. This is not to say that in 3 months owners won't be complaining that there are no games for the Switch, there's a software drought, etc. that inevitably happens with new consoles. But in the meantime, it will mean that the people who have been buying copies of Zelda that still haven't found a Switch will finally be able to play the game when they get one (an attach rate of over 100% is more or less unprecidented).
And of course, Nintendo traditionally makes the majority of its sales in Q4 as a toy maker, which means they will be prepping for the holidays, which could potentially mean withholding stock to increase the odds of holiday consumers being able to find them at retail.
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