It should be sold to consumers. I never heard a company word it like that for retailers only.

If its just ship thats still amazing actually. Close to the ps4 sold for day 1. (And its a port)

If its sold though than NIS will be very very happy and bodes well 

How is the game like? Similar to FE? I might jump in, seems like many love this series

I've never tried it either. BraLoD recommended it in another thread, and since the story is independent, I figured this would be a good place to start.

From what I've seen, it looks like an isometric tactical RPG, so I imagine it feels closer to Final Fantasy Tactics or SMT: Devil Survivor than Fire Emblem. Looks fun to me in any case :P

This is comparing apples and oranges. If I hated srpgs it wouldn't matter how good Disgaea is, I still wouldn't touch it. Same can be said about every other game you listed. I just wanted to tell you that you can't compare these games with each other because eveything comes down to personal preference. I for example love Super Bomberman R, it's exactly what I expected. But I'm not all that interested in Disgaea because I probably wouldn't invest the huge amount of time that's necessary to fully exploit the game. I've watched a video where a guy said you can invest hundreds of hours just raving through your inventory. I just don't have that much time, so I rather buy USFII instead, even if I know Disgaea probably is a good game. I'm happy about the games' success nontheless, it's an important game for future jrpgs, srpgs, and the Switch in general.

There's nothing in the wording that doesn't suggest it isn't pre orders from retailers.  

They obviously know that but how would they know the pre order tally in all the individual stores from actual gamers? 

They introduced some very fun event types, but then stopped doing some of them that didn't bring in as much money. 

After recycling Guild Wars, they kept having event characters in dream boxes, which are the worst for pulls.

Lastly, they kept inflating the game. 7*s weren't so bad, but they introduced 8*s almost immediately after. They're up to like 12*s now.

I guess it's possible the retailers are passing that on with their shipment requests, for instance "we need at least 500 copies for our stores because we have 400 pre-orders" or something. I don't know what kind of communications take place between publishers and retailers.

But I suppose they probably mean shipment orders. *shrug*

The terminology is a little weird though. Why would a publisher call their initial shipment to retailers "pre" orders? Wouldn't those just be... orders? Orders from retailers. "Pre" what?

Maybe it's just a translation hiccup.

Yeah from what I've heard I wouldn't be surprised if this is the third best Switch game. Sounds like the content is there and the game play is deep.

Considering that it's nowhere near popular as some of the big boys on the market and on the "just released" console, it's a really good result!

Well we will get an answer next month either way. If the game sells under 78k for the month (npd) then it was shipments. If its over than 78k then they were actual consumer pre orders