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VAMatt on 03 June 2018
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Luke888 said:
VAMatt said:
I don't trust Nintendo's forecasts at all. They've proven time and time again that they have no idea how many units they will sell. So, the fact that they've forecasted more Switch sales than Sony has forecast for PS4 means very little.

I'm thinking PS4 will outsell Switch in 2018. Next year is a lot harder to call. If Nintendo will do some discounting, and they have some big titles to announce (such as a 2D Mario and Kart 9), it seems reasonable to believe that Switch will take the lead in annual sales at that point. Then again, Nintendo is infamous for missing launch dates for games. So, if they delay big 2018 titles into 2019, or delay big 2019 titles into 2020, that throws a bunch of question marks all over the place, and I have no idea what to expect in terms of console sales.

They still haven't delayed one first party game for Switch, I think they don't want to underwhelm fans expectations, heck they even moved Odyssey from a Holiday title to the Fall of 2017... Also the sales forecasts for Switch have always been on the consevative side since they didn't know how popular it could get, considering many Pokémon fans still have to purchase one and that Smash is one of their biggest Killer Apps I think the 20M forecast is realistic, the fiscal year ends in March 2019, the first half of 2019 will have more games than this year, leading to a rise in sales in the slowest quarter of Switch's first year

Nintendo certainly has done better in recent years, in terms of not delaying big games.  (Unless you consider BotW, which was originally expected to launch for WiiU a year or two before it did).  

As for forecasting hardware sales..... over the last couple of decades, I think they've missed their forecasts by a wide margin more often than they've hit their numbers.  I agree with you that 20 million for the current fiscal year seems reasonable.  But, like I said before, Nintendo's history of inaccurate forecasts and missing launch dates means my level of confidence in that number is much lower than it would likely be if we were talking about Sony or MS.