Yes, I accept that the bare minimum should be the 60-80 million range. But I am not sure folks at Nintendo will be particularly impressed with such a showing. If it only does this, I won't be surprised if they backtrack on the Switch platform philosophy and re-separate their form factors next time around. Although that's predicting that consoles will be a viable space in 5 years from now, on which I am not so sure anymore.

Anyway, if Nintendo play their cards cleverly, they really might have a winner here. I am not saying that the original Switch SKU will do these crazy numbers -- but the Switch family of systems has a very strong chance. I am including in this any revisions, bumped up or shrunk down versions, new docks, etc.

As his logo is EliteZocker, I assume he plays mostly on PC and has no real handle on mobile gaming.

You mean, the one that sold 15M lifetime or the one that will have a hard time trying to do 17M? We can be sure that Switch will outsell both. But it's easy to prove that launch sales doesn't mean anything by using counter-examples:

- PS4 sold several times more at launch than PS2. It doesn't mean that it will sell several times more than PS2 lifetime.

- PS4 and X1 sold basically the same in the launch window. They won't have the same LT sales.

You kind of undermined your own argument with the whole "we can't be sure" angle, but yes. If it did similar to Wii U it would be a death knell for Nintendo. Luckily we live in the real world, and Nintendo always knows how to survive and remain pioneers in the industry - even if not always winning it. They have thought about all of this. They will still play it safe and keep the warchest for even more rainy days, but they have seen their failings and I am very eager to see how they handle the Switch line of products. They will improve from last generation in total. Zelda alone is proof they are dead serious and not to be scoffed at. Let's see how they keep up the momentum at E3. That will clarify lots of things about whether Nintendo has intent or is just sleepwalking.

literally none of that anything to do with what i said, i was merely pointing out a false statement that you made.

40-60 sounds like an optimistic (but not too outlandish) bet. I'm going with that.

I don't like lottery very much, so I don't think it's possible to give very accurate predictions just yet. Switch's success greatly depends on how some things unfold, and I could see them going either way. I think seeing what's really going to happen while considering all the things would require a tremendous amount of insight, which I think almost no one has.

Anyway, considering how the big audience doesn't seem to have found Switch at least yet, I'd say the numbers are going to be 20-80 million, depending mainly on how well the big masses find Switch and how good support it receives in the form of games. Could be even more if the masses find it, but I even if they find it, I think it's not going to be as big as Wii. That's because the market has radically changed because of mobile, and because the masses didn't seem to find Switch at launch in the same way they found Wii, which doesn't bode too well. On the other hand, I don't see Switch doing as poorly as Wii U, because it's a much better product that probably has quite a bit of room for price cuts as well.

Bolded part: you have a point. Even if a console had the worst launch of all time, it could still manage to succeed.

I just believe that it's to early to predict. It's doing great, but it could lose steam. Or it could keep up and sell like the Wii. The only prediction I feel confortable right now is saying that it will outsell the GC. The rest, only in 2018.

Above Wii-U and below 3DS.

Switch stayed ahead in aligned sales in comparison to the 3DS despite the latter having a price cut.