| Bofferbrauer2 said: 1) Nintendo most probably hold back quite a lot of consoles for Splatoon 2 launch if Japan is any indication. Splatoon 2 week basically equals all of June sales. And seeing how the consoles stay up high on Amazon Japan without the prices rising means that there's a constant stream of new shipments incoming for them, too, much more than before Splatoon 2 launch. If we have a similar situation worldwide (though most probably not as extreme as in Japan), then Nintendo must have held back several 100k consoles for the launch of that one game. Without that hoarding the shipments could have very well be closer to 2.5M, which would have been enought to reach the 10M mark by end of the year. With the announced shipment increases for summer and fall 12-14M should be possible for this year 2) It didn't work out for the Wii U because when those finally hit the shelves after long droughts the ship had long sailed away already. On the Xbox side it comes down to having not enough exclusives, and those they have all tend to be from the same categories: Dudebro shooters (Halo, Gears...), Racing Sims (lots of Forza) and failures; either to capture an audience or just not being good enough (Ryse, Halo Wars). Plus, since the games also come out on PC there's very little incentive to actually buy a console to play them if you have an halfway okayish PC (other than being able to avoid the horrendous Windows marketplace). 4) Don't know the exact numbers, but don't just factor the phones, especially for such things like RAM chips. Apple needs those also for their Tablets and Macbooks, although in the latter case in a different format. Bit this still piles up to a lot. But the main problem is that everyone wants those parts, not just Nintendo and Apple: Samsung, Huawei, Motorola and so on all want those same ressources too, if it would be just Apple the situation would be much better. |
1) I'm very sketpical of the idea that Nintendo is holding back consoles to drive up demand and I'd imagine that, if they are releasing bundles for a release (Splatoon 2 did have them, correct?), they don't have a secondar production line. Consequently, there should be an expected spike in sales (as the bundles sell out), followed by a drop off (as they resume normal production). In other words, holding back consoles doesn't affect monthly production, merely monthly sales. To that end, they estimated sales of about 100K for Switch in JPN at launch (4X weekly boost), which would only represent 50% weekly global increase. If you look at their restocking dates there, you can see that they restock in JPN on a semi-monthly or monthly schedule: it was monthly before Splatoon 2, possibly accounting for the extra availability. We're going to have to keep an eye on the successive weeks to know just how they managed to meet launch demand and how much they ramped up production to meet the insane global demand.
2) You've really driven my point home, and I think we're on the same page. Once the tipping point is reached, even traditional "system sellers" can't sell systems. Switch is in the unique period where we can't tell much of anything about the effect of game launches, due to the fact that they don't need game launches to move the needle. It's a nice problem to have.
4) I've seen the guesstimates vary wildly, and the sources haven't exactly been reputable. What you're saying is directly in alignment with the general consensus, however. I do wonder if there's a contingency plan, maybe rooted in a SwitchXL or the like, just to get out from under the cellphone manufacturer supply chain monopolies.
