He believes Nintendo's statements, he doesn't believe their predictions, there's no contradiction here. Context is key.

LOL yea i don't care what nintedo expects or predicts, but nintendo sold numbers are official, if they say they sold less in Q1 thats entirely different then what they expect or predict because they have been wrong with 3ds and wiiu almost every year. 

The tweet he keeps spreading around is a prediction not a statement, hence the "could".

LOL nintedo knows what they shipped for Q1 already dude. if NIntendo mentions a weaker quarter it's not a prediction, they just want investors to expect it.

If this is a prediction, it's a very short term one, and thus more likely to be accurate: " A simple comparison of hardware units sold during the first quarter of this fiscal year might not look as good as the units sold during this period in the prior fiscal year." Nintendo should know by now what they shipped as of June 30th.

A company wouldn't make a negative prediction unless it was extremely sure it was going to be the case, because it's not good for PR. Quickrick says he doesn't care what Nintendo says about meeting the 20m fiscal year projection they gave, because he thinks that despite their best efforts they won't have a chance at meeting it.

As much as you and others dislike him, you're firing blanks in this case.

Thank you for putting in much better words. 

"...However, this is something we expected, so this shift is well within expectations when looking at our software lineup for the entire fiscal year."

What's your point here? it's a obvious PR line to deflect from the negative first Quarter numbers, what else are they gonna say? just to remind people WIIU shipped 160k WW in 3 months in it's first quarter in 2013 and nintedo forecast remained unchanged. 

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/nintendo-q1-wii-reaches-100-m-3ds-32-48-m-wii-u-3-61-m-posts-q1-profit.639993/

The stock drop is not all that unusual. Nintendo has rarely been a good target for short-term investors. Nintendo stocks have only shot up during the Wii years (and that was only about 2.5 years into the Wii, before they dropped) and now during the Switch launch. Nintendo's strength as a publicly traded company has usually been the stable dividends they provide (provided that the Yen is sufficiently weak for a respective operating fiscal year; considering Nintendo, like many other Japanese multinationals, obtains most of its sales abroad and takes advantage of the exchange rate) and hence more attractive to mid-longterm institutional investors (Nintendo's top investors are banks and financial institutions).

As for the topic of Switch sales. Based on the current line up, which I agree will sell a lot of hardware in the latter half of the year, right now I am looking at 13-15 million units shipped. I don't think a weaker Q1 in 2018 compared to Q1 2017 is all the doom and gloom that some are making it out to be (Q3 being lower though would be problematic). For one thing, Nintendo, likely did not ship as many units at the end of Q4 2016 for Q1 2017 due to the supply constraint at launch, whereas in Q4 2017 they likely shipped units for Q1 2018. Secondly, a slightly lower Q1 can more than be made up for in stronger sales quarters. Now none of this means that they will reach 20 million, but we are also not looking at a sales wormhole either.

With that said, there are still steps that Nintendo can take to reach the 20 million goal, so I am far from ruling that out at this point.
1. Price drop on Switch hardware
2. Introduction of bundles with last year's evergreen releases
3. Introduction of a hardware revision (cheaper handheld-only Switch) before Q4 2018 ends (I can see something like that being announced in January of 2019 and going up for sale in March 2019).

is this at all surprising?

it will pick up by the end of the year, plus a new president just got in, so there is uncertainty there as well.