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Clank on 03 January 2019
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Asriel said:
Asriel said:
No, I highly doubt it - that soft spring quarter has hamstrung them somewhat. They needed to be coming in at around 3 million units or more for each quarter outside of Q3; 1.88 million in Q1 just wasn't good enough. Labo clearly hasn't taken off the way they hoped; the three packs combined have probably sold less than Xenoblade Chronicles. Selling less than a middle-tier JRPG is not what you want for a new game that's meant to bring your hardware to a wider audience.

My guess is they're going to land in the 18-18.5 million range, which would still be strong. As others have noted, PS4 did about 17.7 million in the second fiscal year, so around the 18 million mark would be good for Switch. Nintendo are at ~5.1 million now; I can see 9.5 million for the holiday quarter and 3.5 million in Q4, for a little over 18 million for the financial year.

This is what I said two months ago - I'll stand by this. There's a good chance of the third quarter coming in around 10 million and I see 3 to 3.5 million as the range for the fourth quarter. Much as I'd like to see 4 million in Q4, I'm not sure Switch's baseline is going to be high enough for that without either a price cut or a hardware revision (especially to lift sales in Japan, where it's selling strongly for a home console but behind the sales curve of the more successful portable systems like 3DS and DS). 

It's very clear that first quarter has cost them in terms of hardware sales, but given they'll likely be exceeding their software target and will likely be within 10% of their hardware target, I don't think they'll be concerned. If they'd kept to a 3 million (or so) pace in the first quarter, we'd likely be looking at Switch coming in somewhere around 19.2 to 19.7 for the fiscal year, perhaps even bang on 20 million. Labo, like Arms and 1-2 Switch, hasn't caught on the way Nintendo's more conventional first party offerings has - but the tremendous success of Smash Bros and continuing success of the evergreen cohort bodes very well for Luigi's Mansion 3, Animal Crossing and Pokemon generation 8, and for Nintendo's next financial year.

It'll be interesting to see what software Nintendo offer after 2019. The only major sellers waiting in the wings I can think of would be Super Mario Maker and perhaps a Switch version of Nintendogs, but I'd guess Nintendo will have something less conventional planned, too (new IP). Metroid Prime 4 and Bayonetta 3 are candidates for 2020 (as well as 2019), but they won't be major sales drivers.

I fully agree with you. Nintendo is actually launching games for all their main series in 2 years (zelda, pokemon, mario kart, 3d mario, 2d mario, smash, yoshi, kirby, mario party, splatoon, luigi mansion, animal crossing, yokai watch...) So I also think new ips will come 2020, mario maker and I guess another 3d mario / zelda