The chart for the games comes in like 45 minutes from now.

Last years lineup is still selling consoles though and will continue to do so this holiday.

Calendar year shipments

BOTW 2017-6.70m, 2018-3.58m

MK8D 2017-7.33m, 2018-4.38m

Splat2 2017-4.91m, 2018-2.56m

SMO 2017-9.07m, 2018-3.10m

They will all add at least a couple million to those numbers this holiday as well.

It's essentially flat YOY for the first 10 months on the strength of last years evergreens along with a handful of mid-tier titles (Kirby, Donkey Kong, Mario Tennis, Mario Party).

To think it wont be comfortably up once actual major system sellers appear seems a bit odd to me.

Shrug. What was the prediction tool .

Yes, it is flat YoY against a year where Nintendo couldn't manufacture enough Switch units to satisfy demand resulting in stock shortages. I'm not sure why you think that's odd. Do you think that the Switch would be even remotely close to flat YoY if Nintendo didn't have widespread stock shortages last year and could actually meet the demand for their product as they have been doing so for this entire year? Do you think that the stock shortages didn't have any impact whatsoever on the first two quarters of FY17?

Stock issues were solved everywhere outside of Japan by this point last year. Calendar year shipments through September are 2017-7.63m vs 2018-8.00m so basically a wash when factoring in Japan shortages.

It says a lot more about 2017 than it does 2018.  It was up 64% up, yet still came in ~30K behind the Switch.  I'd also hate to see the state of sales without the $199/$399 XBOX S/X when you bought RDR2. 

You do realize that the state of sales has zilch to do with when a predecessor launches, right?  Both the PS1 and PS2 sold 20M+ the year before their successors launched.  If Sony can get enough usable chips, and at an affordable price, they will launch in 2019.  If not, they will hold off until 2020.

“PlayStation 4 hardware unit sales achieved an all-time October high for the platform,” Piscatella said. “While PlayStation 4 hardware dollar sales reached its highest point for an October month since October 2014.”
This was actually one of the best Octobers for any PlayStation console ever.
“October 2018 unit sales of PlayStation 4 reached the highest mark for any PlayStation hardware platform in an October month since the PlayStation 2 in October 2002,” said Piscatella.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/20/playstation-4-outsold-xbox-one-and-switch-in-october/

Here's the games list.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/20/october-2018-npd/

1.Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII**
2.Red Dead Redemption II
3.Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
4.NBA 2K19
5.Super Mario Party*
6.Soul Calibur VI
7.FIFA 19**
8.Marvel’s Spider-Man
9.Madden NFL 19**
10.WWE 2K19
11.Forza Horizon 4
12.Lego DC Super Villains
13.My Hero One’s Justice
14.Shadow Of The Tomb Raider
15.Mario Kart 8*
16.Grand Theft Auto V
17.Super Mario Odyssey*
18.Diablo III**
19.The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
20.NHL 19

Scorpio was the reason X1 performed really bad prior to its release in 2017. Always need to take that into account. It was down considerably last year, now it’s up again.

Where are you getting 8.00m shipments for 2018? It's at 5m for quarters 1 and 2 if I'm not mistaken. Oh wait, why are you bringing up calendar year and not fiscal year shipments? FY17 and FY18 are neck and neck through two quarters. The main difference being that the Switch has been in ample supply this entire first half of the fiscal year whereas there were humongous supply issues throughout nearly the entire first half of FY17.