Predict Switch Sales and Factors in Switch Sales in 2018 (Thoughts & Poll Included)

[Sordel]

I don't really like to predict, but the first two options in the poll seem very, very unlikely. We bought a Switch for my 12yo nephew this holidays with Zelda & Odyssey and he's completely besotted with the thing. He has a friend who speedruns Zelda. Teenagers & young adults are very driven by what is being played around them and I think there's a critical mass that Switch can reach to become even more successful. (At the moment I'm amazed when I meet adults who have literally no idea what the Switch is!)

That said, industry sentiment for the Switch has been sky-high and I think that there's a backlash waiting in the wings. Nintendo can be quite slow to exploit good will (for me the Wii was ultimately a bit of a disappointment because it never capitalised on the promise of Wii Sports) and I could see a lot of impatience if the release schedule becomes dominated by shovelware with too little AAA activity. Also, the Switch is currently helped by the fact that the VR goldrush is perceived as having stalled; if that gets rolling again then it sucks a lot of money out of the market that might otherwise go Nintendo’s way.

A year is a short time, though, and the adverse factors are unlikely to have much effect this year.

Selling over 20 million is credible, but this would depend on Labo. Switch could do 15 million without Labo succeeding, but it will take something special to put it over the top, and Labo has every appearance of a craze waiting to take off. If the mini-games exceed expectations then a large audience previously little interested in videogames could end up buying Switches as 'Labo machines'. Short-term, things look good in terms of sales.

The assumption is that Switch sales were supply-constrained in Year One and will be demand-constrained in Year Two, but that's what people said about Amiibo and Nintendo has never risked higher inventory costs on those. I could see the total for the year being up near the manufacturing capacity, in which case again we're probably closer to 20 than 15 million.