colafitte on 03 January 2019
| RolStoppable said: It has been clear since the announcement of Pokémon and Super Smash Bros. bundles in September that Nintendo will prioritize profits over hardware unit sales this fiscal years. Nintendo should comfortably meet and exceed their forecasts for profits and software sales, so falling a bit short on hardware sales isn't going to be a big deal. And they will fall short, because Switch isn't looking like it will ship 11.5m and 3.5m in the final two quarters. We are still waiting for a lot of sales data from North America and Europe, but holiday sales have been strong across the globe, so shipments for Q3 of this fiscal year should be 10m+. Q4 shouldn't have a problem to at least match the previous year, because Pokémon and SSB will still be fresh and NSMBU Deluxe releases in January; it's reasonable to expect 3m+ for the quarter, bringing the total to a minimum of 18m. Said 18m will put Switch ahead of PS4 once again. First full fiscal year: PS4 - 14.8m Switch - 15.05m Second full fiscal year: PS4 - 17.7m ($50 price cut) Switch - 18m+ Realistically, the worst case for Switch is that it only matches the PS4 and it does that without a price cut. Considering that Switch won't fall far short of the forecast, a price cut in October to $250/€250/25k yen would have certainly made 20m attainable. But missing that target isn't a serious cause for concern when full context is being applied. |
This. I completely agree and i've been saying that for months. The moment Nintendo made an hybrid console it was obvious Nintendo abandoned the race for "unit sales" and instead entered the race for "profit sales" and this became more obvious after Nintendo announced their own Online paid service. That's why i not expecting Switch reaching Wii sales lifetime but still being the most succesful Nintendo ever thanks to 1st party sales and subcriptions for Online.
As for the rest. 18M+ is definitively possible, and it will be an enormous success because like you said, it will put ahead of PS4 in the same time period in shipment sales.
I still think Switch will fight to reach 17M shipped though.
