Could be a bit less than 14 in all honesty, Furukawa saying 15 is a stretch is kind of funny actually. It isn't too often a company provides a sales target and then immediately cast doubt on their chances of hitting that, lol. 15 sounds like what they would get if everything goes right (probably won't), 14 more realistic, 13-13.5 probably not out of the question at all. 

This year was supposed to be 21 million and end up actually being 17.97. 

I suppose it's good to be blunt in this case, no matter when the next system releases. 

A lot of people interpret Furukawa's early 2022 quote of

"Switch is just in the middle of its lifecycle and the momentum going into this year is good. The Switch is ready to break a pattern of our past consoles that saw momentum weakening in their sixth year on the market and grow further." 

as meaning Switch was pretty much exactly halfway in its life. But beyond that, a few even interpret it as meaning that it's probable that Switch won't get a successor until early 2027.

Lifecycle does not inherently mean the duration between a platform's release and the release date of its successor. It usually means how long a platform is available before being discontinued (and there are some sales after that, but only remaining stock). The Wii U only lasted from November 2012 to January 2017. It couldn't even survive until the Switch's release in March 2017, or slightly beyond. 

if Switch 2 launches at any point in 2024, I think it's still pretty likely that Switch can hold on until early 2027 or even 2028-2029. It depends how much Nintendo can make off of it and if enough people are still buying the software. The DS has a disputed discontinuation date. Some say as early as Q1 2014, but some say not until some point in 2015. Nintendo clearly didn't consider the DS worth it enough anymore to keep manufacturing until 2016 or 2017. Even with greatly declining sales, it may have slightly surpassed the PS2 if it lived until then. But Nintendo wasn't interested in surpassing the PS2 just for the sake of it, and they already had enough platforms to worry about supporting at the time. 

Nintendo pretty much dropped all the "Switch has a long life cycle ahead of it" stuff in the last couple of fiscal years anyway, now all Furukawa will say is "it's pretty hard to keep selling a system this damn old". 

Every company can decide I suppose what they want to do with their console transition and how long the current console gets to stick around. With DS they choked its shipments to try and help the 3DS. With PS4, Sony basically killed the system to force people to buy a PS5. With 3DS though, Nintendo let the 3DS stick around. 

It's not something to get too worked up over I think because the company itself is not even interested in these things half the time, so it's hard to have any investment in the whole thing when the company that's selling the product doesn't even care itself (like the DS, Nintendo gave no craps about what its final LTD would be). 

I've posted a new video going over the latest Nintendo earnings report, sales figures, and forecast for anyone interested. 

Hopefully they've got a 2D Mario for the holidays. We're of course still waiting for 2D Mario and a DK game on Switch, only gotten last gen ports so far. Those would be obvious choices and 2D Mario in particular would probably be a 20m seller.

But this late in the game I doubt any single piece of software would boost hardware that much. Only thing that would do that would be a price cut and it doesn't really seems like they're gonna do that. Sounds like Nintendo is just gonna let Switch fade without any actions to push sales further, and we'll probably be looking at a Switch 2 in maybe a bit over 12 months (maybe timed for when kids are getting out of school for summer break) or holiday 2024, though if they don't have any big games planned for next year I would assume a late Spring launch is more likely than waiting all the way until the holidays.

If they go a little bit over 14m this fiscal year that'll put it right at 140m to head into perhaps its final couple months before the successor comes out.

But yea besides the Switch coming near the end of its life cycle, this could still be a big year for Nintendo. They opened the Nintendo theme park in California earlier this year, you've got the Mario movie that'll probably make like $1.4 billion and probably end as the second largest animated movie in history, you've got Zelda coming out which is probably the most anticipated game the Switch has ever had and will almost certainly sell over 20m this year, and if they can close out the year with say a 2D Mario that would be a pretty great year for the company despite moving into the final 12 months of the Switch's life.

I hope that means that they actually have a big game for the holidays and not just Pokemon DLC.

No noteworthy surprises with the sales figures posted here. The evergreens continue to have great legs, the smaller IPs/latest releases land in the 1-2m range. Hardware for the fiscal year at 18m in line with the adjusted forecast.

I'll update my spreadsheet later this week. Hopefully I don't forget to do it in wake of the release of Tears of the Kingdom.

The hardware forecast for the new fiscal year doesn't suggest that Nintendo will give it their all to push sales. At the same time Nintendo's initial hardware forecasts for Switch have usually been off in either direction. So while things should be more predictable the older Switch gets, it's still true that Nintendo misjudges the appeal of their own products and how well they'll do.

You gotta have a holiday game each year almost regardless I would have to think (giving the COVID shut down year a pass). 

I think it's 2D Mario, it's long over due at this point so it's probably better to get that out now, the next 3D Mario can then be for the Switch 2. If they don't even have that ... that's gonna be an ouch.

No real surprises for this fiscal quarter but a few records have been reached for Nintendo still software wise and the evergreens are still as green as ever so the platform do be healthy, especially with the most anticipated title of the platform on the brink of release.

Anywoo, Kirby Return's to Dreamland DX already beat the original release Lifetime sales so it's another win for the franchise and the Switch !

Xenoblade 3 prolly had good sales with the Expansion pass, especially after what was shown with the surprise reveal but it's kinda disheartening how the end of the saga won't be able to outsell the first game that came out on the console

Nintendo is forecasting the software sales to drop quite a bit this fiscal year even with Zelda: ToTK, didn't notice that at first look ... that surprised me a bit. I wonder if they really don't have a big holiday title this year. Feels an awful lot like a year before a new hardware generation is coming.