The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[RolStoppable]

Farsala said:

This is my type of topic.

Should I take the OP as an official prediction then?

Japan: ~10m more, so ~35m LTD
Americas: ~20m more, so ~60m LTD
Europe: ~20m more, so ~47m LTD
Other: ~10m more, so ~22m LTD

Quoting this post as a reference point because my original post was terminated. Also got around to updating my spreadsheet with all the latest numbers, including the CESA White Paper.

When I created this thread, global Switch shipments had reached 103.54m units, so a little less than 60m to go to exceed the 160m mark and become the best-selling console of all time. IIRC, in a response to the above post I said that this isn't a regional prediction, but merely a rough guideline for what needs to be accomplished (the numbers tally up to ~164m to begin with). Already back then it was clear that Japan's goal would be much easier to reach than Other's, so it's no surprise that the most recent shipment numbers confirm this original assumption.

So right now, six fiscal quarters later, we have 129.53m globally. Breaking down the regions:

Japan: 30.79m, so ~5m more.
Americas: 50.18m, so ~10m more.
Europe: 33.53m, so ~11m more.
Other: 15.02m, so ~5m more.

The above guidelines add up to ~160.50m lifetime, with Europe and Other receiving more breathing room due to the good pace of Japan and the Americas. Even so, the goals for Europe and Other will be tougher to reach than the others in the above example. On the other hand, Japan is currently overperforming on a level that picks up the slack for Other; admittedly, Japan's overperformance is probably directly caused by sales of consoles that end up in Other eventually. But this thread has always been about global sales, so such odd regional discrepancies do not matter as it's just shifting sales from one place to another and we would count them all the same anyway. Europe is the big question mark: Still the most to go, but at the same time also the region with the most remaining growth potential.

In year over year calendar shipments for the first half of the year, 2023 is only ~0.5m behind 2022, resulting in a soft decline of under 10%. This happened under the condition of the average selling price going up with Switch OLED shipments increasing by a full million; the standard Switch decreased by ~1.5m units, Switch Lite remained flat, hence ~0.5m less in total shipments. What I find interesting about this is that it suggests that demand for Switch remains high, provided Nintendo actually makes use of SKU options.

Going forward, the year over year comparison is rather gentle with 3.25m in calendar Q3 2022. While I don't think that 2023 will beat that, it's not going to lose much ground. The holiday quarter will be the real deal with 8.23m in 2022, but Nintendo has lined up a little game called Super Mario Bros. Wonder that screams for its own special edition hardware just like Tears of the Kingdom got one. I don't consider it unrealistic to finish 2023 with quarterly shipments of ~3m and ~7m, if Nintendo doesn't mess up SMB Wonder. This would result in calendar year shipments of 17m units and an LTD figure between 139-140m. A more conservative estimate puts 2023 at 16m, the worst case would be 15m if we remain realistic.

Software-wise, the first half of 2022 was at ~97m, 2023 is at ~94m. All in all, 2023 looks to set things back on track after 2022 underperformed a little. We can look forward with confidence, because 2022's overshipments have already been normalized in 2023, so now 2023 can ship as much as it sells, rather than shipping below sell-through.