| Faelco said: The only thing we know about Nintendo's expectations is that in a month, they still didn't sell the initial shipment in Japan (far from it), because they sold only 30% at launch. And they had a massive marketing AND Golden Week. That's a poor sell-through performance, or a vastly overestimated first shipment.
So at least, Labo underperformed compared to Nintendo's expectations. |
I think your looking at those shipments the wrong way. IIRC, Nintendo doesn't actually determine the shipments for games in Japan, retailers do. It's likely that retailers wanted to make sure there were enough copies for GW, so they stocked accordingly. Add to this that Labo isn't available for download on the eShop due to its DIY aspect, so it's likely that Nintendo would want to supply more stock than usual for Labo. Plus, those shipments are for both the Variety and Robot Kits, and we know the Variety Kit is outselling the Robot Kit by a large margin. We have no idea what Nintendo's actual expectations for Labo were at launch, but Nintendo did say in their recent IR meeting that they're off to a good start so far with Labo, and that they plan to develop it into one of its staple products that is "not constrained by the boundaries of conventional video games". That's a good indication of how Nintendo actually views Labo in regards to performance.
Last edited by TheMisterManGuy - on 14 May 2018
