EDIT: I'm pretty confident this will happen now. If Nintendo is willing to launch Pokemon Gen 9 this holiday they are likely counting on a fairly healthy amount of Switch stock going forward.
First, the current state of the chip shortage is almost entirely to blame for this. Regarding Switch showing a recent decline in sales, I have heard so much discussion on saturation vs shortage issues and I believe that, by and large, the latter is the culprit, with the OLED model often difficult to find in stock.
Second, I am talking fiscal here (April 1 to March 31) and sales are going to improve throughout the year as stock increases. Right now, official shipment numbers put the Switch at 18.95m for the first three quarters, with Nintendo predicting 4m for quarter four for a total of 22.95m for fiscal ending March 31, 2022. Nintendo is going to have a big year in 2022 with software that will allow them to remain pretty much flat for Q3 and Q4 (Oct '22 - Mar '23), provided they do have a big holiday game and release a strong selling title sometime during Q4.
Hitting another 10.7m for the holiday quarter this year is certainly possible (especially when PS5 and XSX are undoubtedly going to remain supply constrained), and I don’t think that matching 4m for next Q4 will be too difficult, assuming stock is more plentiful by then. Where I think we will see the numbers grow this year is during Q1 and Q2 (April - September), with Switch Sports, Mario Strikers, Splatoon 3 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 creating much greater demand than last year's lineup for that time frame (sales being 8.28m for the two quarters). I predict that Switch will show an increase in shipments over the passing year for Nintendo’s financial report in 2023.
Finally, keep in mind that the 3DS, a system with only a fraction of the Switch’s trajectory, accomplished this very feat in its sixth year or so with a 480,000 shipment increase YoY. I think Switch has a good chance to be up YoY by even more than that.
Last edited by archbrix - on 28 February 2022
