People walk into a shop and buy it. Specifally 18million people in the next 9 months. It will probably sell arpund 10 million in Q3 alone.

Nintendo usually sells 50%+ of their consoles during Q3. And I am sure they are banking on 10M+ in that quarter this year and with Super Mario Party, Pokemon and Smash.. It's very much a good posibility that happens.

I am sure they were hoping for an increase YOY but it was close to flat so it probably doesnt matter. The system was never going to sell a lot more than 2M in Q1.

2M for this Q1 and 20M total would have been clean milestones for them. Maybe they released the Q result late because they were adjusting again and again the numbers hoping that it could be 20M...

Even before Q1's numbers came in relatively soft, 20 million was a tough ask. I'm not confident Nintendo will reach it, but I also wouldn't concretely rule it out yet. The final six months of this fiscal year are a big test for Switch. Personally I think 18 million is likeliest and, let's be clear, that's still a big accomplishment and a successful year for Nintendo and for Switch - I suspect if Nintendo have another weak quarter from July to September (~2m rather than ~3m in the quarter), they'll have to lower the prediction at their next set of results.

That being said, regardless of whether or not they hit 20 million, I expect Nintendo to have a massive second half to their fiscal year. I expect they could ship somewhere in the region of 13-14 million Switch units from October through to March, on the back of Pokemon, Smash, the combined Super Mario Party, Just Dance, Star Link in October, 'evergreen' titles becoming bundled (Odyssey, Kart, Zelda, Splatoon 2), and some Black Friday promotions.

The 'wildcard' things that could swing Nintendo to the 20 million mark would be any combination of:
- Labo actually drive hardware sales from September onwards
- extremely aggressive Black Friday discounts
- a September price-cut
- Pokemon/Smash lifting the baseline momentum and powering a strong Q4
- a major Q4 title (Animal Crossing, Mario Maker/Bros) providing another boost.

They usually will sell on the last quarter with bundle and discount. Smash Brosh and Pokemon also are heavy hitters , and of course 

they will sell it with

Have he said it before or after the initial sales? For me it seem strange to launch something in April only expecting it to sell in Holidays (even more considering the inventory space it take). But perhaps they run the numbers and it made sense and making more exposition before holiday was better than being the hot new item on holiday.

But if Nintendo really didn't expect much sales on Q1 due to Labo then listing Labo as HW pusher for Q1 would be equally wrong.

One thing we know is that for short term VGC is anything but accurate =p

Shipment per Q will be hard and you'll have to look at each financial statement available (several of them don't have explicit numbers).

On VGC you can manually look each month for each platform but it's a lot of work.

Pokemon is the key.

The PS4 sold I believe

7.5 million its launch partial year (Nov-March 2014)
14.8 million it's first full fiscal year (Ending March 2015)
17.7 million its second full fiscal year (Ending March 2016)

Switch sold

2.74 million 1 month launch (March 2017 only)
15.05 million its first full fiscal year (Ending March 2018)

The way I see it anything over 17.5 is a pretty good success and keeping in line with the PS4, granted the PS4 had a few extra months because it launched in November instead of March. But if we're looking at full fiscal years.

20 mill is a nice number, but I don't think it's the be all, end all. Anything above 17 mill for the fiscal year indicates healthy Switch performance and is keeping in line with the PS4's sales at about the same age. What's more important is not having up and down quarters as much. You don't want so much riding on the holiday season, that's not how a successful hardware platform should operate, sales momentum should be a more consistent throughout the year.

I can't find the post anymore but someone here told me something which means that approximately :

"It is not because SSB on Wii U sold 5M for 13,5M WiiU, that we can expect for the Switch >20M for potentially 60M of Switch minimum."

Because it is not a linear calculation, but it is more based on the fanbase quantity.

So if I understand well, it means that back in the past 10-5 years go, young people and young adults had the capacity to be seduced by SSB and become a member of this fan base, but not in 2018 today ? So only the already existing fan base will buy the game, but there is not while I am talking, some young 8-12 years children who see the trailers and footages of SSBU and say to their parent :

"- Hey mum I want this ! I want this game ! it looks awesome there is every nintendo in it !

- For Christmas if you are a nice boy until then."

Price cut? Nintendo? Are we talking about the same company here?