Also can I just say Bravo to vgchartz Switch tracking. They've been pretty bang on ever since the thing released!

I was wrong, I was expecting 19m+, but it will be 17m+, thats again very good result in any case.

So is 17m a shipped prediction or a sold-through one? Because if it's shipped that's pretty disappointing, that's putting down their prediction by 3 million.

So what is the Q3 breakdown for HW?

Q1-Q3 Switch- 14.49m LTD: 32.27m
Q1-Q3 3DS- 2.31m LTD: 74.84m

It is shipped as always for Nintendo. And yeah the market might react negatively to the reduction, depending on if they expect reduced SW as well.

That's some healthy numbers, though I really would have loved to see that 20m+ forecast come true. Oh well, better luck next time.

I just realized something, maybe Nintendo shifted their prediction to 17m because they believe that is a much easier goal to not only achieve but to also exceed (like say with sales of 18M) and has a more positive effect overall than forecasting 20m but being off by 2m.

Forecasts have much more to do with production imo, as well as their book keeping. They only plan to produce and ship 2.5m more for the rest of their FY. They won't manufacture significantly more or less than 17m. That means if sales all of a sudden skyrocketed to the point that they would need to produce 19-21m, we would see major stock problems.

But aren't forecasts based on how much of your product retailers are willing to carry? So I would assume it's about production and orders equally. But you're probably right, lol. I just find it odd that the Switch forecasts have changed so much, but maybe that's normal for consoles. In 2017 I think it was originally around 14M and it changed to 16.5M, I believe because demand was beyond what was expected.

Is it really shipped numbers and forecast?
On page 8 of the report it's written "(4) Consolidated sales units, number of new titles, and sales units forecast" as the title of the numbers we are talking about.
So is Nintendo forecasting 17M units sold by the end of march '19?
This is a bit confusing.

EDIT. If it's really 17M sold we could look at ~18.5M shipped, which is still below 20M