| StarDoor said: Do you not understand the context of Nintendo expecting Switch to be behind 3DS shipments for this fiscal year? Let me give you a hint: 3DS was never sold out. |
Yes I do understand the context in Switch being behind 3DS but supply is a short term problem ...
| StarDoor said: Wii went from 16.5 million in its first year to 24 million in its second year, and DS went from 11 million to 21 million, so I don't know why you've propped up a 50% YoY increase as some impossible goal, especially when Switch is supply constrained and is clearly not selling as much as its demand would allow. All Nintendo has to do to increase sales next year is produce more units. For reference, look at the quarterly breakdowns of Wii shipments:
The holiday quarter for 2007 only made up 37% of the FY's shipments, and the holiday quarter for 2008 was just 40%. This makes sense, as these are the two years during which Wii was constantly sold out. In 2009, Nintendo's manufacturing capacity finally matched demand, and they were able to sell 55% of the year's consoles in the holiday quarter, a trend which continued all the way up to Wii U's release. From this, we can gather that Nintendo does not hold back as much stock for the holidays when a console is constantly sold out during the middle of the year. |
Are you really going to compare Switch's shortages to the Wii's ?! The Wii was selling at comfortably above 40% more of it's MSRP for nearly two years straight since it's debut while Switch is selling at 17% higher than it's MSRP right now after just over 6 months and the consensus is that demand is already met in Europe ...
Not saying it isn't going to spike again during the launch of Mario and the holidays of course but after that price should renormalize in as little as 4 months ...
| StarDoor said: Now, let's look at 3DS:
Do you see the difference? In its first full fiscal year, 62% of 3DS shipments occurred during the holiday quarter. Why was this? It was because Nintendo massively overestimated demand for the console, and produced more than retailers would even order. This led to Nintendo infamously cutting the price by $80 in August. The next few holidays have a similar ratio, going from around 55-60%. The 2016 holidays had the lowest ratio of any 3DS holiday, and it was unsurprisingly a period of exceptionally low stock for the console: https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/19/14006908/where-to-buy-a-nintendo-3ds |
I thought it was because Nintendo had overvalued the system ...
| StarDoor said: When Nintendo can produce enough consoles to completely meet demand for the year, roughly 55% of shipments happen during the holiday quarter. When the console is supply constrained, they can go as low as the upper 30s. If Nintendo only ships 10 million for this fiscal year, it is guaranteed that the holiday quarter shipments will be much lower than what they actually could have sold. Switch shipped 1.96 million units during the April-June quarter this year. If you assume that every non-holiday quarter is the exact same (which is lowballing it, as shown by the increased supply and sales in Japan and the US for this quarter,) then, to reach 10 million, the holiday quarter will only be 4.12 million, or 41.2% of the FY's shipments. As you can see, this percentage is in line with the Wii while it was supply constrained. Interestingly, if Switch ships 1.96 for Q1, Q2, and Q4 (once again, a lowball estimate), that would be 5.88 million, which is higher than what 3DS did in its non-holiday quarters for the first fiscal year: 5.17 million. In reality, non-holiday shipments of 1.96 million suggests true demand of 13 million, and this number could be higher depending on how much more Switch ships during Q2. This unmet demand will spill over into subsequent quarters, which is why it is illogical to assume that Switch's 2017 will be its best year, and that sales can't increase substantially in the future. In conclusion, Switch may have a lower first year than 3DS, but its long term prospects are better because the non-holiday months are making up a much larger portion of the year's sales, indicating that sales can increase substantially with better supply. |
I never assumed 2017 was going to be the Switch's best year and if Nintendo does need large shipments in the holidays there's an easy solution known as stockpiling where Nintendo keeps the production of Switch at 100% during low demand seasons (winter/spring/summer) then introduce the surplus at holiday season (fall) ...
Yes, Switch's non-holiday months are better than the 3DS so far but this time Nintendo went with a fairly different release strategy ...
Let's take a look at a moment at why that was observing the 3DS's major releases in each of it's year ...
2011 - SM3DL and MK7 all released in the fall season, the only major titles outside of that season in the same year was Nintendogs + Cats and OoT 3D
2012 - AC:NL in fall with NSMB2 in summer
2013 - Pokemon X/Y in fall and outside of that season was Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Tomodachi Life and the other notable game Monster Hunter 4 was released at the end of summer ...
2014 - SMB 3DS
Whereas in 2017 the Switch launched with BotW, released MK8:DE in spring, released Splatoon 2 in summer and will launch SMO in the fall so far ...
