On the flipside of those predictions though were all the equally off-base claims that it underperformed as soon as the charts rolled in.

It had been 11 years since the last time a new 2D Mario came out, people simply forgot that they sell through long legs rather than huge openings.

Aren't the quarter reports normally include shipment numbers and not sold ?

Most of the numbers are shipped. They also gave a 10.7m sell-through figure for Mario Wonder for Dec 20th.

So Nintendo upped their hardware shipment forecast to 15.5 million.

As of this update, FY24 stands at 13.74 million units shipped. Which means it needs to ship an additional 1.76 million units to reach their updated forecast.

If it does, the Switch would sit at 141.12 million units lifetime the end of March 2024. And if that happens, then this is what we'd be looking at by the end of March:

1. PS2 - 158.70 million units.
2. DS - 154.02 million units
3. NS - 141.12 million units and counting.

So, it would need to ship another 12.9 million units from FY25 and beyond to catch the DS. I'll say right now, I think it's gonna do it! Either by the end of the next FY or sometime during the one after that (FY26) the Switch will pass the DS to move into 2nd place on the all-time hardware sales list.

It's AFTER that where things get difficult...

Because at the same time, it would need to ship another 17.58 million units from FY25 and beyond to catch the PS2... And that is NOT going to be easy.
I think everybody here is guessing by this time next year, Switch 2 will be out or, at the very latest, just about to come out. (March 7th, 2025 release date, just after the 8 year anniversary at the very latest, I say. But I think a more likely release date will be September 2024.) And barring any unforeseen circumstances, that is going to really eat into Switch 1's legs and we're going to start to see shipments and sales decrease rapidly.

Like I said, I think it's close enough to the DS where I think it should still be able to pass it in spite of this, but the PS2 is an entirely different matter. It needs to ship ~2 million more than what it's projected to ship this FY, which means it's not going to do it by the end of next FY. So, we're talking 2026 or beyond for the Switch to pull it off... And honestly, there's a strong chance that it WON'T pull it off.

That PS2 number might be a bit out of reach.

We'll see. Considering they just had to raise shipments by 500k, there's also the possibility that sales may be strong enough this quarter to where they end up raising them again. And there's also moves Nintendo can make to maintain sales like price cuts, hardware revisions, and a strong post-NS2-launch lineup of games to keep consumers interested. And depending on the launch price of Switch 2, and if they DO go through w/ price cuts and revisions to bring down Switch 1's entry price, that can keep people invested.

At this point, I think it's legit 50/50 whether or not the Switch becomes the best selling system of all-time.

This is true but that's also why I didn't/don't expect that big lifetime sales for Wonder because it's simply launching too late to get the full value of that, not counting a potential Deluxe edition on the next system. Unlikely as it was it needed a huge opening if it was to reach those massive 30m+ numbers that many were predicting. It's pretty damn safe to say at this point that won't happen, but it should be able to break into the Top 10 which is still something.

It basically continues to rely on what Nintendo's strategy is with the Switch 2 release. As has been the case for the past couple of years now, whether they sell more than the PS2 entirely depends on the decisions Nintendo make in the upcoming months. Switch 2 launch date? Switch 1 price cut? Switch 1 software support?

I continue to expect them to basically put all their chips on moving people to Switch 2 as fast as possible but we will see what they do.

Switch 2, March 2025 confirmed! Goodnight PS2 its just going to be only a matter of time before your reign ends, and a new King will be crowned.

PM Sent

It depends what one's definition of "big lifetime sales" is.

Wonder is likely to continue selling for a long time; it will take years after the release of the successor for most Switch owners to upgrade, and many Nintendo games keep on selling well after their system is replaced.

This late in it's life even Nintendo titles are front-loaded. I mean ToTK is already selling the same this quarter as Mario Odyssey. Sales of evergreen titles are tied to hardware sales. New people get the system and they pick up the evergreens. Do you have examples of Nintendo games that kept selling well after hardware sales stopped? I wanted to look at the IR Data for units sold on Nintendo's site but internet wayback is only going back to 2017 for me, not sure if the url changed or something cause I've used it before to get to much older data.

Wii hardware sales collapsed after 2010, but New Super Mario Bros Wii kept selling.