Nintendo has sold 1.5 million Switch Consoles According to SuperData
Nearly 9 out of 10 Switch owners have also purchased Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Nintendo has sold 1.5 million Switch consoles according to data supplied by GfK and Famitsu to SuperData. The data tracking firm states that 500,000 consoles were sold in the United States, 360,000 were sold in Japan, with Europe performing comparably to Japan. SuperData points out that 110,000 Switch consoles were sold in France along with 85,000 units sold in the United Kingdom.
These figures are mainly being sourced from the first week of sales, so it is very likely that the current total of Nintendo Switch consoles sold is higher than 1.5 million units. Nintendo President Kimishima has stated that the company expects to sell 2 million units of the brand new console in their March quarter. Kimishima-san's estimate is based on Nintendo's expected "sell-in" to retailers while SuperData's estimates are based on "sell-through" to customers. This means it is very likely that Nintendo will hit their target for the final quarter of their fiscal year ending March 31.
Another interesting datapoint brought up by SuperData is that 89% of Nintendo Switch purchasers also bought The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This adds up to more than 1.3 million units of the game sold, not including the copies of the game sold for Wii U. This has already proven to be an impressive launch for the Big N, with the Nintendo Switch outpacing Wii in its first 2 days of sales. Only time will tell if Nintendo is truly playing with power as the early adopter wave of mania subsides.
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replyAsif Khan posted a new article, Nintendo has sold 1.5 million Switch Consoles According to SuperData
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I don't have apples to apples numbers, but PS4 took 2 weeks to sell 2.1 million units and Xbox One sold 2 million units in 18 days.
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Yup, both November launches. Wii U was as well the year prior.
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They could also do mini pushes with each major game release (mario kart, splatoon, mario).
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By the end of March.
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It says that in the article...
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I could have bought like 3 of them launch day if I wanted to. Plus the preorder of one I did back in February.
Now everyone wants one.
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But... but Nintendo is dying! They've gotta get out of the hardware business!
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is that good or bad performance when you compare it to $399 and $499 consoles, respectively?
Also I'm loving these new sales analysis timeframes. I've never seen two-week analysis or March to November comparisons before, haha.
this feels like sorting certain excel columns or rows until you get the numbers you want.-
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I can't imagine anyone is, bcs it's not under any metric.
I just can't speak to best-selling black-colored console released before DST post-9/11 launched during the Aquarius sign before opening day baseball while running a regression analysis for seasonal affect disorder levels of granularity.
My question, rephrased, was: is that meaningfully significant? Does it portend future success?
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Its all hypothetical, no way we would know unless we rewound time and Nintendo released a $400 system. Ditto if Microsoft didn't completely screw up their execution while totally misreading the market. That's not what happened though, its a useless exercise.
Price is only one factor. You also need to look at if sales demand was created by the product offering something completely unique. The market is saturated with shitty PCs, it doesn't need a third. It being cheaper is one factor but its far from the only one.-
Has Nintendo stated (or implied) what their measure for success would be with the Switch? I think their internal business analysis and forecasts would be super interesting.
Like, do they measure this new system against their portable line, where numbers are going to be harder to hit? Their home console line? Obvi this is a hybrid so direct comparisons (ala 3DS vs. DS, Wii U vs. Wii) won't be as surgical, but I still think knowing what they expect would be fascinating.-
Yeah, same, no idea what they're projecting for this thing. I don't expect it would do as well as 3DS did but who knows? It really depends on what their roadmap for price drops and possible hardware revisions is.
For a while I thought that a smaller hardware revision (for the kids, like Wu Tang) would be a lock, but then I realized that the joycons are a hard constraint on its vertical dimensions and there are games like 1 2 Switch and Snipperclips that straight up require them.
Either way, a price drop or pack-in to go along with Pokemon, Monster Hunter, etc, seems like a certainty. If those are timed properly and there's enough of a value proposition for the handheld 3DS/Vita-only market to step up a little more (3D Mario, Zelda, Smash, etc) then it could match or exceed. Who knows.
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Seeing as hardware sales only serve to push software sales, more is better. Nobody is raking in fat loot on hardware. It's the software. And seeing as Switch games aren't cheaper than PS4/XBOne more is still better. The only hitch is that carts cost more to make than discs, but with more and more purchases being digital, it's less of an issue.
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Are you going to port demons with shotguns?
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Are you tired of people asking you things like this? Haha
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We need to re-up Operation: Switch for Milleh for those of us that weren't smart enough to pre-order or waltz in on launch day to pick one up!
They pop up on Amazon Prime Now in various markets, maybe shackers served by those markets could buy, reimburse & re-ship to other shackers?
I have one on order from Amazon Spain, but it hasn't shipped yet (ordered five days ago) so I'm starting to question the validity of the order.-
Anyone looking to buy one should definitely install the chrome plug in that auto refreshes every 2-3 seconds, then they sit on the bestbuy and Amazon switch pages and stare at the screen for an hour or two straight until you can add to cart and check out, this may still work if it's trickle stock like at pre order time
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This could be so much higher if it was actually in stores.
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They're not going to produce enough to come close unfortunately, they're hamstringing themselves.
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Does anyone seriously believe Nintendo is holding back supply? Still? We've had this discussion.
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=36056725#item_36056725-
I'm not saying they're holding back supply, I'm saying they didn't order enough in the first place to satisfy demand. It's their conservative nature but it bites them in the ass more frequently than it should.
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Well I have to agree to some extent with the general sentiment that they compressed their development timeline for the Switch. Like, key components of it - like VC, or a web browser, or sharing games across multiple systems, things that other consoles do - are not in place yet. But they needed to get something out there to make up for the Wii U. It's possible this thing started out as a 3DS successor but then they decided to upgrade it to main console experience. So it makes sense that there wasn't enough initially out there to meet demand.
But hopefully they do better than they did with the Wii and increase capacity temporarily. -
how so? they could have made more money, sure, but in the end they made all the profit they calculated. It's always easy in hindsight to say why didn't you x y but people are declaring Nintendo dead since at least since the 90s, they probably have a basic idea how to run shit.
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They've been short on every console launch since the Gamecube at least. The dry spell for the 3DS and Wii U wasn't nearly as long as the Wii's because the demand wasn't there for sure but both easily hit 3-4 million as fast as the supply was available. It's that amount they should've had available on launch day. It's also a problem with their Switch marketing schedule. If they'd started at a regular time announcing bits and pieces of it they'd have a better handle on demand now instead of trying to ramp up production in fucking February. Of course by doing so they would've cut Wii U sales even further but that's a better price to pay IMO given how they weren't selling anyways.
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Every other console has been short of inventory on release as well. The 360 was a big example and that took almost a year to clear up even with RROD issues. 360 faced RAM shortages because they doubled the RAM during design and before production at the behest of Epic Games. PS3 had shortages of the Bluray parts given how new it was.
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I'm not saying there haven't been shortages, but the PS4 barely had any because price was the culling factor. Xbox 360 was their own damn fault for making changes so close to production (I don't think they saw the RROD coming, else they might have pushed it back a bit to fix it). I'm just saying Nintendo has been doing this long enough they should've known better, even with the Wii U they sold over 3 million in the first like, 6 weeks. Not having at least that much available in the first month is a mistake that could've easily been avoided.
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The demand for Wii-U was high at launch but it was finite. Their marketing sucked too and the system ended up slumping in sales. Add to that there was a economic slump as well affecting everything.
They ended up having more Wii-U systems later and weren't being sold. Retailers won't stock more units if they have plenty sitting on shelves or rather send them back if they can use that finite retail space for something that sold. So Nintendo ends up eating the cost of producing inventory that isn't being sold and had to be stored somewhere which costs money.
It's better to produce products optimally because if demand is high people will buy it whether they get one today or a month from now. But someone who wants it now but doesn't get it and then changes their mind later didn't really want one. For a game console maker this customer was already lost because now they're not buying games to keep their business up because that's the end goal of selling the console.
The amount of NES Classic systems they made makes sense because that thing isn't designed to sell more games. It's sold once and that's it. So keeping it within limits makes sense.-
If they'd opened up the NES Classic to preorders they probably would've manufactured more to help meet demand but I agree it was unlikely they'd have more than about 400k released even then. It's a considerably more niche product.
They can hedge their bets on the Switch, as they've done, but it's going to artificially limit software sales of early titles that way, which isn't good for their partners. Fortunately for them a lot of their bigger partners didn't have much of anything available at launch and Indies will often jump at the chance to release anywhere. It's a cost benefit analysis that I don't think they've been on the right side of for several generations now.-
It's seems only on the wrong side for those who couldn't get one.
Everyone who wants one will get one. If they don't later than they didn't really want it and shouldn't be factored into the demand equation as much.
I was able to get the GCN and Wii within a month of them launching just by being diligent. Wii-U I didn't care for at launch until Windwaker HD came out. Despite that I don't own many games for it. Wii-U was all sorts of fail by Nintendo least of them being production. I don't think the Switch will be as much of a failure and supply issues are almost always temporary. I doubt key suppliers of theirs will go out of business soon affecting their inputs or there will be some legal action preventing their sales. Nintendo will and always have caught up with the demand. And they never break their backs doing it which is a good thing on the part of their long term planning.-
I'm not a share holder nor have I missed out on a Nintendo console launch since I've had a job but I still feel like they should have a better handle on supply issues.
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They're handling it fine. They're still in business for one and they have a product that is very hard for others to replicate and compete against. Plenty of substitutes have come out like mobile phones eating their share but Nintendo has shown they are able to adapt to changes as well as being able to boldly experiment with new innovations for better or worse.
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I'd say they're handling it functionally while seemingly obvious areas for improvement appear to be ignored. C'est la vie.
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What you call an improvement would be consider wasteful to plenty in all fields of manufacturing. Even the outside parties that do the manufacturing for Nintendo would tell them the same as it hurts them as well. Nintendo doesn't own their own manufacturing like they used to which is much less risk for them but someone else still has to bear the risk and thus has skin in the game.
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I didn't interpret your post that way. I would like to propose some possible logistical concerns that might be responsible for the current low supply of consoles.
1) Nintendo rushed to get Switch out the door this month, the last quarter in the 2017 fiscal year. It could be that despite their best intentions, they simply couldn't manufacture the ~2 million they aimed to sell and have them in stores for the first (or second) week of availability.
2) Building on my first supposition, I imagine that Nintendo is staggering releases to stores--not intentionally, but again, to the best of their assembly line's ability. I'm sure they're cranking out Switches, especially given strong sales so far, but I don't know the particulars involved in building mass quantities of these things.
3) Although most Switches seem to be working fine, some people have had problems. It's bound to happen anytime new hardware launches (at least Switches aren't bursting into flames!), however, my console has frozen three or four times. It always happens while playing Zelda, leading me to believe the problem lies either in the hardware or in Zelda. I also own Fast RMX, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, and SnipperClips, but the longest stretches of play time have been with Zelda, and the console has only frozen after 3+ hours of use. It happened to my wife yesterday.
I bring this up because I'd rather Nintendo ease off the gas a bit and work out kinks. For all I know that isn't possible right now. It could be that the Big N has another 10 million-plus units committed in production, making it impossible or at least extremely difficult to work out kinks before another wave or two, or three, or ten land on shelves.-
Yeah, I would've liked it to launch with fewer problems too, (and a more complete OS), but that's what happens when you rush to meat damn investor deadlines. I'd expect we won't really see everything fixed till about 3-4 months out and by then we'll probably have 4+ million already in the hands of the early adopters.
Given that, however, I feel like it won't be too long (I'm giving it another 23 months or so) till we see a Switch-lite/XL/whatever which a significant portion of the early adopters will get anyways, so in the end it works out.-
meat meet ;p
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Yup, they will either replace it or have you send it in to be fixed :/
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They have generally had a lot more supply available on launch day, not saying it doesn't all get eaten up but supply issues have not been as severe or consistent as with Nintendo the last few generations.
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Even being conservative having 50-100% more units available at launch was pretty much a guaranteed sell-through.
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First, Nintendo needs to get preorders out earlier which can give you a much better idea of demand. You simply couldn't preorder the NES Classic at all and it seems like they had no idea it would be popular.
Second, it was their own fault the Wii U sold bad entirely due to marketing. Most people did not know it was a new console. They thought it was an addon or something to the Wii so why get that I don't need addons!
Now I'm not saying they should have many millions but Nintendo is extremely bad at predicting things due to their own fault. -
I'm talking world wide availability. They sold about 3 million Wii U's in the first month, now it was a holiday release and this isn't, but it's also their worst selling console. Having 3 million available at launch and increasing/decreasing production to reflect presale numbers would've been the smarter thing to do.
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They hit 3.06 million sales world wide as of December 2012, they sold practically nothing for the 6 months after that though, which is what killed it.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/30/nintendo-financials-reveal-wii-u-sales
It's what makes presale time and manufacturing negotiation power so important.-
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It came out at the end of November and it's through December so it's as close as we're going to get to actual 1 month numbers.
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And you have opportunity costs and what happens if there's one defect that's now affecting twice as many units? You also increase demand for critical components which doesn't scale as well as say the plastic parts. This ends up increasing the cost of the component per unit so your Cost of Goods Sold or Manufactured goes up, lowering your revenue from the sale price that is fixed. It's basic Cost Accounting that any company involved in manufacturing whether it be Intel, nVidia, Sony, Apple, Nike, and so on have scores of MBA's whose job is to optimize these things.
Production also scales upward over time as efficiencies naturally improve over time. Revisions become easier to implement.-
That's immaterial as that's considered when doing all of this as part of the launch price and contract negotiations. It's not like they haven't had as many units as I mentioned at a launch before and they've never had a problem selling at least that many with one exception that was a far greater risk than the Switch. An earlier announcement and presale would've enabled them to adjust more as well.
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Preorders are something that's up to the retailers to do and they do that at the risk of not getting enough units from their suppliers which isn't always Nintendo itself. That's a lot of contracts and deals to be done and preorders aren't always a good indicator of demand because with a product like a new game console, you're gonna get people who pre-order in waves because no one wants to pay that much upfront for a system that many months out and you end up with canceled preorders often which means now you ordered more inventory than you needed or now has to be redistributed.
Nintendo will also have to deal with stores that don't properly report their sales numbers either in order to get a larger share of the launch inventory. And pricing for the product is also very fluid in the year up to launch of any major product (I got friend who work in pricing for big companies and it's a very fine balance between the work of the cost accountants, finance, and your market research teams). So retailers will have an even harder time to set the price if not even their suppliers know how much it was going to be. Hell there were plenty of threads here debating the cost before it was announced with the preorders.
And thus the retailers did have preorders back in February and that's how I got my first one. Those were for guaranteed inventory that was to be delivered release day and even some places ended up not getting their allotments on time such as Amazon who are the kings of Just In Time inventory.
Target I went to release day had 35 systems and only 13 or so people in line at store opening. I contacted as many people I knew and then some that wanted one and only one actually made the effort to go get his.
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yeah it's getting really tiring. They are conservative, they only produce what they really know they can sell. To see what happens otherwise one just needs to look at the money printing machine that Infinity toys could have been. I mean fucking disney owns so many valuable IPs it's ridiculous and it still failed because they were too optimistic. Nintendo is here since forever and they intend to stay.
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Also remember guitar and band games? That saturated the market too much and died out.
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For a while it was just one game in town until everyone jumped in.
Wii did the same with its motion controllers then MSFT and Sony jumped in but weren't able to mirror that level of success.
With the example of Disney above, they were the second to market as well since Skylanders had been out well before them.-
And all of those examples don't relate to a single new console launch which only started take preorders just a few months ago. Maybe if Nintendo actually announced things I don't know 6+ months or a year in advance they could get better numbers to adjust their manufacturering.
Nintendo is extremely bad at this sort of thing and always has been. They play it super safe which isn't horrible but they could still play things safe and sell more product if they had information.
I mentioned it above but everyone knew the NES Classic was going to be the hot item yet not a single preorder was offered. So how can Nintendo reliably guess demand. Sure they can use idiot knowledge or have real information. As it is, you still can't place an order for it, only when it's in stock and it flies off within minutes and has been that way for four+ months.
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That's good but if it keeps getting only those indie titles and japanese JRPGs then it will end up into another 3ds device which i truly hope not
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3DS sold over 60 million units...
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And Wii did as good if not better, this is targeting a different segment, it's a home console and should act like one.
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But we have to be mindful of the fact that they are coming off of their worst performing home console in history with the Wii U. This is a different bar than what was in front of them at Wii U's launch.
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Yeah, the mindshare over the Wii-U was bad. I can understand how their marketing this time around had to distance themselves from that system. New name, new look (even functional emphasis on taking the controllers off the side) cool docking station, that sound effect of the snapping controllers being very emphasized, also the ads showing more adult players than adolescents especially playing together. I remembered with Wii it always felt segregated.
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It's a handheld that can also be a home console. That's clearly the way Nintendo is approaching it.
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nintendo doesn't give a shit about how xbox or PS succeeds, because they have a different plan and different audience.
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I think this is really a testament to what having a big name launch title will do for console sales. But we might also be witnessing the last of the traditional console launches if the rumored move to a more iterative hardware process happens.
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I feel like Nintendo is going to do what Nintendo wants to do, but they've set themselves up in a way that could be quite good for their iterative mobile hardware process they've been doing since the gameboy for the next decade or so.
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Does that mean that the XBone's disadvantage may be very long term.
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Depends on how hard MS pushes for backwards compatibility, and how much developers are willing to put into higher end version utilization. All in all I feel like we're not going to have the end of a generation polished to fuck/pushing the hardware as hard as you can stuff we've had since the days of the Atari 2600 anymore.
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Its a nintendo handheld, they have been doing that for a while and their first gen is always more proof of concept followed up with a universally good release before they take away good features and go full retard with shit like the micro.
-Gameboy-colour/pocket,
-Gameboy advance/advance sp/micro
-Ds (fat), lite,dsi,dsixl
-3ds,xl,2ds,new3ds,new3dsxl
the iteration went from display,battery, sound,cpu to formfactor.
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That would require Nintendo to invest more money into something that isn't a 100% sure bet.
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I agree w/ Eurogamer in the sense that this launch reminds me more of the N64 than any other.
*Launched with what many considered the greatest game of all-time, at the time (Mario 64)
*lengthy dry spells
*Zelda 64 later comes out and it is also considered one of the greatest games of all time.
*dry spell
rinse, repeat.-
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Man you had Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Wave Race, Rogue Squadron, Shadows of the Empire, Star Fox, Pilot Wings, WCW vs NWO, WCW revenge, Turok, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Smash Bros. I think those all came out before Zelda. I could be wrong on a few though.
I was never short of games to play on that machine.
Post Zelda you had another big list of great games too.-
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oh man I remember being borderline OUTRAGED when Next Generation's There is Something Wrong With the Nintendo 64 issue came out, haha:
https://douginsano.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/mariocrackedimage_1.jpg?w=438&h=597
there's actually a lot of neat, additional pages and screenshots from the issue within the article, here:
https://douginsano.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/looking-back-at-1998-nintendos-fall-part-2/
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I think the last release I was excited for was the Original Xbox because Halo.
N64 before that because Mario.
360, Wii, and PS3 all had very little in the way of games at launch. But I got the 360 and Wii at launch mainly to ride the wave of getting a launch system. Last Gen I waited at least a year before getting their systems.
Switch to me was a throwback to those launch console days especially given a new Zelda.
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Splatoon 2 Global Testfire up on the eShop 10 days early. ~400Mb
http://i.imgur.com/LpbvKS6.gif
My body is reggie. -
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This just made me wonder "What was Nintendo doing during WW2?" since they were with the bad guys. Not a lot of info out there.
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I would like to believe that... But at least in my area the Wii was difficult to find up to about a year after it came out. Crazy. That stupid Nintendo Classic is still sold out everywhere and sells regularly for $150 - $170 on eBay! (I actually wouldn’t mind having one of those things but I'm not paying a dime over retail for it).
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I can't find a damn 3ds XL at retail price right now either.
I mean, I understand demand being high... but at a certain point you're also just content with it not being in stock. If demand spikes for a few weeks, you weather the storm a bit and don't overcommit yourself. If demand is high and sustained for months and years, you generate supply.
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But they consistently underestimate demand by a huge amount and they don't seem to adjust. They have created a second hand market for their devices where consumers make triple profit on their systems. They play it too conservative. I think too much demand for a product and not enough supply at some point tips over to being a bad thing. People only want a thing for so long then eventually they give up. They could have sold 5 million of those Nintendo Classics if they were a bit more aggressive. I guess we'll see how the Switch plays out.
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About 3 months, will be hard to find again come Christmas.
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They got plenty of Black Refurbished N3DS XL's for $170 on Nintendo's site.
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Zelda is a solid tent pole. They will continue to sell these things like hot cakes for awhile. If they can get some solid hits through the year they will keep the momentum going. Then if Mario hits in time for the holidays, it should give this thing all the weight it needs to stay around for a good while.
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Yeah, there have been stories of that since launch. I bought a screen protector with mine because I thought it would use a plastic screen at its price. If you aren't using one people should probably keep it against the back of the dock as they insert or remove it. Stupid thing to worry about either way.
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I put a pair of my gf's hair ties around the front of the dock... what an idiotic problem though. How on earth do you design this dock in a way that scratches the plastic screen? I've done nothing but take it out of the dock and put it into a carrying case for the last week... also my screen protector peeled off so that didn't work. Nintendon't care.
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Its a pretty big oversight. They did test these though and I don't recall seeing any of the demo Switches I played with a little over a week ago having scuffs. Those units had been on the road for two months so they've had a lot of usage at that point.
I heard a theory that some of the docks angle differently and that this discrepancy is what's causing the scuffs. No idea for sure.
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So dumb that this happened again. This was an issue with the original 3DS, and I think maybe the XL too.
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Wat? I love my OG 3DS. Got the special Zelda OoT edition in 2011.
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I hated the finish of the plastic, how wobbly the sliders were, and the hard diagonal edges made it very uncomfortable to hold. It was really surprising because the DSi that came out shortly before was such a nice handheld, so comfortable and it looked great.
The XL and New models fixed my problems with it. Idk, I wasn't a fan at all.-
I have big hands, so I've yet to find a DS that is comfortable for me to hold for long periods. I'v always just dealt with it. I do play to pick up a New! XL at some point, so maybe that will be a winner.
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WiiU sold really first month. Launch numbers do not equate to long term sales success with consoles. But it's a good start.
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