Going into the holiday season, many people including me predicted that one of the reason Switch supply was so limited throughout 2020 was not only cause of the crazy demand, but Nintendo saving stock for the Holiday Season to maximize their holiday season sales and potentially have the greatest holiday quarter ever.
However, based off of sales data, sales of the Switch were pretty much exactly the same as the 2019 Holiday Season and in some cases slightly lower than 2019 despite the Switch has soaring to astronomical demand for most of 2020, with sales all year long nearly twice the amount as 2019. As Nintendo didn't at all have enough stock to meet demand.
Some people believe that the lack of a big Holiday Title like Pokemon or the lack of a new hardware release like the Switch Lite is the reason for lower Holiday Switch sales in 2020, but that is an objectively wrong assumption. The last thing to blame for slightly lower holiday sales is the demand. If Nintendo was able to meet demand I think Switch could've shipped 14M in Q3. All throughout the 2020 Holiday Quarter it was extremely hard to find a Switch for retail price as it was sold out everywhere and all the stock would sell out as soon as it came into stores. It wasn't like 2019 where you could just walk into any store and buy a Switch without needing to search store after store to find one. I work at walmart and asked the electronic section associate how fast Switch's get sold out, he states as soon as Walmart gets them they're sold out.
But what do you guys think is the primary reason why Nintendo didn't have enough stock for this holiday season? Was Nintendo limited in terms of factory output and was unwilling to use more factories to make more Switch's? Is covid-19 affecting the factories? Or is it a strategy by Nintendo to extend the demand of the Switch for longer to look better for investors who might be worried of the long-term future of the Switch. Maybe its to get more hype around the Switch since something sold out gets more demand, which isn't something atypical for Nintendo to d since they did it with Amiibos,NES and SNES Classis, and more.
