this astral chain stuff is weird the game was Co-directed by Kaori Ando and unless something changed she is Nintendo employee

Huh ... one of the other co-directors was also an EPD employee ... 

I mean, I knew Nintendo's relationship with Astral Chain was mighty unusual. PlatinumGames was actually commissioned to make the game before Nier Automata, but given the Astral Chain team got the offer to make Automata, Nintendo let them take a break on the project till Automata was finished (most likely because they knew the Wii U was a flop by then, lmao). They literally let a developer take a 3 year hiatus from a project they commissioned them to do. But I had no idea that two EPD developers co-developed it. 

It makes some sense though, iirc the team at Platinum wanted to turn it into more of a Pokemon meets Action kind of game, and Nintendo is actually the ones who reigned them in and told them to make each Legion of one unique type. 

lol and I did not know about the EPD employee so that would mean 2 of the games 3 directors are Nintendo employees.

Nintendo seems to release roughly one of these experimental type games per year; last year it was Mario Kart Live, in 2019 it was Ring Fit, in 2018 LABO.
They're fairly low risk as they don't have the budget of a BOTW, Mario Odyssey, or Xenoblade, so it's not a huge loss if they don't take off, but if they do (see Ring Fit) they're a big win.

Ah that's true. I like the yearly experiment. Labo and MK Live were cool ideas and sold very well for the niche products they are, and Ring Fit is obviously a huge success and hopefully Nintendo is smart enough to make more Ring Fit games. Builder Garage looks like another very cool idea. I imagine it too will be fairly niche since there is no system-wide sharing of games which will limit its ability to build network value, but still I could easily see it selling 2-5 million considering its cheap price.

Makes me excited to see what Nintendo comes up with in the next few years if they keep pumping out a yearly experiment.

Yeah I find it hard to peg down a sales number for this one; I definitely don't see it becoming a breakout hit like Ring Fit but given its price and that it seems like a fairly appealing little piece of kit, it should easily clear a million. I mean, even LABO and Mario Kart Live with their much higher pricer tags did that.

Maybe 2-3 million? Will be interesting to see.

Nintendo releases have been pretty barren so far this year and we dont know much for their second half of the year.
Hopefully they have an unannounced game or 2 releasing during the summer.

For those buying digitally, Game Builder Garage will take up just 995MB:

https://nintendoeverything.com/switch-file-sizes-snowrunner-cotton-reboot-game-builder-garage-more/

Yes! Now I can FINALLY make my dream game: Dude, Where's my Car?

Yep; but only in North America and Japan, (and here in Australia strangely) but apparently not in Europe for some reason:

https://nintendoeverything.com/game-builder-garage-is-digital-only-in-europe/