After doing some research and some calculations with the figures from the past 3 years for the Switch, I would actually be surprised if they DIDN'T ship 14mil+.

If we look at the last 3 Q2/Q3 periods for the Switch (June-December), the percentages of their sales and do some calculations, the math looks like this.

2017 Percentages:
Q2 2018 (Jun.-Sept. 2017) - 2.93 million units (28.83858268%)
Q3 2018 (Oct.-Dec. 2017) - 7.23 million units (71.16141732%)

Q2/Q3 combined total (Jun.-Dec. 2017) - 10.16 million units

2018 Percentages:
Q2 FY 2019 (Jun.-Sept. 2018) - 3.19 million units (25.31746032%)
Q3 FY 2019 (Oct.-Dec. 2018) - 9.41 million units (74.68253968%)

Q2-Q3 combined total (Jun.-Dec. 2018) - 12.6 million units

2019 Percentages:
Q2 FY 2020 (Jun.-Sept. 2019) - 4.8 million units (30.72983355%)
Q3 FY 2020 (Oct.-Dec. 2019) - 10.82 million units (69.27016645%)

Q2/Q3 combined total (Jun.-Dec. 2019) - 15.62 million units

At the moment, THIS year looks like this:

Q2 FY 2021 (Jun.-Sept. 2020) - 6.85 million units.
Q3 FY 2021 (Oct.-Dec. 2020) - ???

Q2/Q3 combined total (Jun.-Dec. 2020) - ???

The percentages I have listed next to the other Q2 figures is the percentage of sales those Q2 figures make up of their respective combined figures with their Q3 counterparts. Obviously, since Q3 is the holiday quarter, that's going to eat up most of the sales.

So we have percentages ranging from 25.3% - 30.7% for Q2 and 69.3 - 74.7% for Q3. We have 6.85 million units for Q2. Assuming one of those percentages were to hold THIS year, the Q3 figures might look like one of these:

Ranked from lowest to highest: (2019 -> 2017 -> 2018)

2019 percentages:
Q3 - 15.44 million units  (Combined Total - 22.29 million units)

2017 percentages:
Q3 - 16.9 million units (Combined Total - 23.75 million units)

2018 percentages: 
Q3 - 20.21 million units (Combined Total - 27.06 million units)

So we'd be looking at a quarter between the ranges of 15.44 - 20.21 million units. 

For comparison's sake, these would need to be the numbers for Q3 to be 12, 13, and 14 million respectively.

Projected Q3 Numbers: (Q2 percentages)
12 million units: (~63.7%)
13 million units: (~65.6%)
14 million units: (~67.1%)

TL:DR - Nintendo could raise manufacturing and production at EVEN LOWER RATES than they did their last 3 holiday seasons and STILL break the record. So much so that Tbone's 14 million prediction is actually BELOW the range assuming the percentage of sales in Q3 this year is within the same range as the last three years. 

Remember what I said earlier in this thread about how Nintendo typically doubles or triples their holiday shipments from the previous quarter? THIS is what I was talking about. Just shipping enough to break the record, which would be ~12 million, would mean they did WORSE percentage wise than their last 3 holiday seasons! It would actually be one of their WEAKER holiday seasons from that perspective! But if they ship within that 69.3-74.7% range like they have the last 3 years, they won't just break the record - !!!THEY WILL FUCKING SHATTER IT!!!

It all comes down to how much Nintendo is able to manufacture. If they can ship 20 million units this quarter, they will SELL 20 million units this quarter!

I think they should ship at least 16m this quarter if they are able.  The real question is, "are they able"?

Here's what I just posted on Era.

BEGIN QUOTE

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Nintendo Shipments

Nintendo Sell-through Pixel Counting:

FY | Q |    JP |    NA |   EUR |   TOT |

18 | 1 |   560 |   730 |   510 | 1,800 |

18 | 2 |   630 |   800 |   640 | 2,070 |

18 | 3 | 1,690 | 3,610 | 2,580 | 7,880 |

18 | 4 |   970 | 1,200 |   750 | 2,920 |

19 | 1 |   510 |   890 |   670 | 2,070 |

19 | 2 | 1,010 | 1,030 |   810 | 2,850 |

19 | 3 | 1,990 | 4,080 | 2,860 | 8,930 |

19 | 4 | 1,500 | 1,680 | 1,050 | 4,230 |

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With the two sets of data above, the net inventory buffer (Q3 shipment - (tracked sales + Q2 net inventory buffer) = 8% across NA/JP/EUR.  I plugged 10% for JP/Other and 5% for NA/EUR, yielding 6.6% overall with the numbers below.  Last year Japan was much higher than that figure, as was Europe, but NA was approx 3%.  I think these assumptions are conservative.

For Europe, I built a breakdown of 475/975/1410K for 2019 Oct/Nov/Dec then plugged known Oct/Nov 2020 shifts and kept Dec flat to get to a round 3,275K sell-through for the quarter.  For JP I plugged ~120K for MyNintendo Store sales of plain HW, ACNH bundles, and RFA bundles.  Honestly have no idea if that is too aggressive or not, this is the 2nd weakest assumption IMO.

For NA untracked sales, I used US NPD sell-through as 90% of total NA sell-through (last year was 92.3% - we know CA has been tracking relatively higher this year).

Other + Eur was 127% of Q1 US and 114% of Q2 US.  Using my Europe shipment figure and an assumption of 110% for Q3, I get just under 2M shipped for "Other".  This is the least sound assumption I'd argue, so we'll see how much it varies.

Here's what I get (everything at the end is rounded down to the nearest 10K.

All of that yields ~12.9M shipped.  If Dec 2020 Europe is up at all, we hit 13M.  If my assumption is too soft on the "Other" bucket, we hit 13M.  If My Nintendo store sales are larger, we hit 13M.  If all of the above, we target 13.5M.

If stock was more plentiful at the end of Q2 2020 vs Q2 2019, then my net buffer assumptions are too large and we trend closer to 12.5M (or maybe even lower).  <12M seems difficult unless global net inv buffer is negative, ie more leftover stock at the end of Q2 instead of Q3.  Based on really strong relative Oct in US/EUR, that's not impossible, but US December rebound from Nov (+23.5% weekly sales) goes against that (but not strongly) - similar story in JP (especially early Jan).

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END QUOTE

Rol is probably right after Alan, I was expecting bigger shipments and record sales but with no huge flagship game it wasn’t happening. Still could get the record at 12mil though :P

11.5mil+ I was wayyy off, way too bold I’m sad :(

Guess no new huge game from Nintendo still made a difference acterall

I think shortage issues played a bigger role than expected

It's just short of 12M for the record, so less shortages and/or a bigger holiday title would have led to the record. It was the third biggest holiday quarter ever.

I was off by 10.5 million.

I thought it would be 12 million. Wasn't far of.

Both that and that missing holiday game from Nintendo