I think that's the low end of what the total could end up being since it would either have to get revised down in a couple weeks or have a kinda disappointing holiday season but 25M is possible.

Yeah that is on the low-end for me too. I'd be surprised if it did less than 26m.

Where does that strange idea of stockpiling come from?

You have a product that sells out the minute it goes into retail, and from that point on you can sell software for it.

In your world, you pay for storage, don't sell any software for the stored items, and then at the end of the year, you sell the stuff, just to be able to say "See those biiiiig numbers on Xmas.." ?

So in the real world, you sold exactly the same number of units, but didn't sell any software (and replacement parts/services..) for months for items locked away... makes no sense.

If something sells in seconds, you sell it to maximise profit, plain and simple

26-27m is what it'll most likely end up at as long as adjustments aren't notably large.

Yep you're right. Shipments will of course be a lot higher in the lead up to the holidays but the idea that they are purposefully holding stock back for the holidays is silly.

They're not getting contacted by retailers and saying "no sorry you can't have our readily available stock because we're saving it for Xmas." Like all companies they want to sell all that they can as fast as they can.

Sell now is better than sell later.

The same way that there is extra stock at black Friday and Christmas, it doesn't magically appear they ramp up production months before and stock pile the extra, now what happens in the second half of 2022 is supposition and will of course depend on the size of those production increases, I'm obviously not talking pre pandemic numbers I'm talking about splitting some of that extra production between the normal stock and holiday stock ,so if they can increase normal supply numbers while being able to hold some extra stock to increase holiday stock above the weekly average they will look to do so, yes it may sound counterintuitive since the hardware is selling out but there are reasons why it is a viable strategy.one being software sales per unit sold increase during the holidays and it also fits in quite nicely with Sony's habit of putting out first quarter Games.

2020 will remain Switch's peak year; the one-two punch of Animal Crossing New Horizons and the pandemic is a force too great to replicate without any similarly seismic events this year. 2021 will be respectably close though, and still an impressively strong year.

You do know that several thousand units were spotted on the warehouse of walmart or amazon while stores shows as sold out right? That is being speculated as they stockpilling for BF and Xmas, because them they will be able to use the influx of buyers for the consoles to sell other stuff as well.

Agreed, and I think the argument that last holiday didn't have a big title is moot. Switch was such a popular item last year that sales wouldn't have been affected all that much.

Not hard to buy an OLED switch here.