PR: Switch surpasses Wii in best-selling Nintendo console in US on BF+CM. +115% HW over 2017

sfortunato · Nov 28, 2018

It's not that Nintendo gave incorrect numbers.

Two things: 1. internal data vs. tracked data by third parties; 2. interpretation of what Nintendo is actually saying.

NicknameMy · Nov 28, 2018

srtrestre said:
Revision next year + price drop for the OG hardware + bundles

Next year could be NUCLEAR

Even without a hardware revision, next year in terms of software will push Switches out like no tomorrow. I can't even list all of the mayor selling software because it is so much.

Skittzo · Nov 28, 2018

Serenitynow said:
What the hell is this article?

"'The stock is heading back to the level when the Switch was announced, which doesn't say great things about its long-term prospects,' Ash said." *ignores the fact that the entire market is down significantly

"'I don't see sales growing unless the price is reduced to below US$200,' Pachter said, indicating a 33 per cent cut from the Switch's current price."

Lmao okay Pachter, let's just jump to the conclusion that the Switch will underperform this holiday, ignore the strong currently announced 2019 lineup, skip right past $249 and just drop the Switch to $199.

"'The Switch excitement has rapidly declined,' Ash said. 'Unless there's significant change or something else new, the Switch story has been exhausted.'"

Pack it up folks. The Switch story is exhausted. ... Do people actually make investment decisions based on these analysts?

The real baffling part of the article is the very beginning:

With few attractive titles for the holiday shopping season and shipments on track to fall short of the company's targets, doubts are growing whether Nintendo Co.'s (NTDOY.PK) Switch can ever become a mass-market product.

Not a single mention of Pokemon Let's Go or Smash, which are going to be the biggest openings any Switch game will have had yet.

higgsboson1997 · Nov 28, 2018

Cudpug said:
'And that doesn't even take into account that one of the most anticipated video game events of the year is still to come: the Dec. 7 launch of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game. As previously announced, the game has become not only the most pre-sold Nintendo Switch game of all time, but also the most pre-sold Super Smash Bros. game ever in the series.'

Good grief! Are there any figures for this? I'd love to know what pre-order figures are looking like for Smash. Very surprised they're higher than Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey!

I love when Nintendo is doing well. Watching their performance is an absolute roller coaster - when they're doing well it makes me feel a bit giddy :@)

That's not too surprising. Zelda was not really a guaranteed 7 million + series (unlike Smash) pre-BOTW. Skyward Sword sold 2 times less than Splatoon 2 already has, for instance, and 3 times less than Smash Brawl. No 3D Mario also has sold as much as Smash Brawl has, although 2D Mario regularly sells much more than that.

Zedark · Nov 28, 2018

Jade1962 said:
How many times has this actually happened though? Especially in the last 5 years. I've only ever seen this one example cited.

It happened last year in April, too, where Nintendo made a statement about MK8D's attach rate that suggested they only sold 114k that month, while in the end they sold 280k that month.

Spinluck · Nov 28, 2018

Oh boy, once that revision hits, and the OG unit gets a price drop. Nintendo could be eating good the next couple of years.

Based on the revision rumors, will it be the same hardware but more compact (and shrinked die size?). Or a Switch Pro?

FTF · Nov 28, 2018

Wow that's awesome and very impressive.

DevilMayGuy · Nov 28, 2018

That's incredible!

Skittzo · Nov 28, 2018

Spinluck said:
Oh boy, once that revision hits, and the OG unit gets a price drop. Nintendo could be eating good the next couple of years.

Based on the revision rumors, will it be the same hardware but more compact (and shrinked die size?). Or a Switch Pro?

Well we have hints from three insiders as far as I know. Two have said that a pro Switch does exist, but they did not clarify if that is what's launching next year. The other has said that the one launching next year will be more like a DS Lite revision than a pro.

So it could be either. We don't know.

Arynio · Nov 28, 2018

Benji said:
Something isn't accurate here

Because Switch was up significantly YoY every week of the month. With BF having this sort of growth the estimates people are putting up are essentially impossible. Its higher than that

I think Nintendo is adding the Black Friday 5-days sales to the official LTD up to October, but not the rest of the November sales. I know it's weird, but they've reported weirder stuff in the past.

Dr. Mario · Nov 28, 2018

Better than Wii is absolute madness, did not see that coming. I guess BF and CM are bigger now than a decade ago, but still. Interested to see what December will do.

Papacheeks · Nov 28, 2018

Is this including the Mario KART Bundle? or is this specific to mostly Cyber monday/Black friday?

Zedark · Nov 28, 2018

Papacheeks said:
Is this including the Mario KART Bundle? or is this specific to mostly Cyber monday/Black friday?

It does include it. It's from Thursday through to Monday.

Papacheeks · Nov 28, 2018

skittzo0413 said:
I'm starting to doubt the non-US sales actually. In the US it seems to be doing extremely well, on track to hit the goal based on the US's share of the global market, but other markets like Japan don't seem to be seeing the same increase YoY.

It did super well in Japan on Pokemon's release which was what a week before Cyber/Black Friday in States? It sold like 180,000 units in Japan alone in less than a week.

Zedark said:
It does include it. It's from Thursday through to Monday.

Thanks. That makes sense.

Deleted member 46922 · Nov 28, 2018

I'm not one for predictions, but this would seem to me like a US november/december will be 1.4 million/2.4 million, so 3.8 million in the US alone in two months.
Extrapolating from that it would point to a 18.7 million worldwide in the second fiscal year.

Skittzo · Nov 28, 2018

Papacheeks said:
It did super well in Japan on Pokemon's release which was what a week before Cyber/Black Friday in States? It sold like 180,000 units in Japan alone in less than a week.

Actually 200k according to Media Create, but this past week is behind YOY.

Japan's holiday period starts a bit later than the US's though apparently, so we should start seeing some major gains the week Smash launches.

Davy said:
I'm not one for predictions, but this would seem to me like a US november/december will be 1.4 million/2.4 million, so 3.8 million in the US alone in two months.
Extrapolating from that it would point to a 18.7 million worldwide in the second fiscal year.

I'm curious what ratio you're using to extrapolate that.

Also this 3.8M will be sell-through, and the FY goal is shipments. 18.7M sell through this FY could well indicate 20M or more in shipments.

byDoS · Nov 28, 2018

skittzo0413 said:
Also this 3.8M will be sell-through, and the FY goal is shipments. 18.7M sell through this FY could well indicate 20M or more in shipments.

This is actually super important, everyone.

jack_package_200 · Nov 28, 2018

Yeah this is gonna meet Nintendo's 20 million prediction

kvetcha · Nov 28, 2018

byDoS said:
This is actually super important, everyone.

Very good point.

Akash · Nov 28, 2018

AFAIK the 20 million goal is sell in not sell through. They could get a big bump in Q4 from retailers stocking for Animal Crossing and possibly Fire Emblem, particularly in Japan. I think they might pull it off.

Oregano · Nov 28, 2018

skittzo0413 said:
Yeah Q4 is another big question mark. NSMBUDX will put in work as will Smash, since it launches at the tail end of Q3, but beyond that we know literally nothing. Yoshi or FE might launch, or maybe not. Maybe we'll get a Prime Trilogy announcement for February a la Bayo 1+2 last year, or maybe it'll be later. The thing is, none of those are real hardware drivers. They'll help, but they won't make a huge difference.

Unless they do have another big gun (which is very possible) I don't see Q4 going too far about 4M. Maybe if they channel stuff a bit towards the end it can get to like 4.3 or so but not much higher than that.

DeuceGamer said:
Especially with Smash releasing so late in Q3. There will still be significant momentum/demand from Smash going into Q4. That will make the Q4 release schedule even more effective.

I might be overestimating NSMB but I wouldn't be surprised if its still pushing a somewhat significant amount of hardware in both February and March.

Dark Cloud · Nov 28, 2018

byDoS said:
This is actually super important, everyone.

This needs to be pointed out on every page that the 20 million is Nintendo shipped not sold through

klanar · Nov 28, 2018

if its 10M sellthrough extrapolation(11-12M shipments), then 2.5M japan Q3 is insane based on 25% shipping. Right now, november is flat compared to last yr, december must be within record amounts. Will smash carry NS in japan?

byDoS · Nov 28, 2018

Dark Cloud said:
This needs to be pointed out on every page that the 20 million is Nintendo shipped not sold through

Pretty much.

Wiped · Nov 28, 2018

Calamari41 said:
My guess: it is way more damaging to overestimate your sales than to underestimate them. So when Nintendo releases early figures like this, it is possible that they have a policy to only report the absolute most conservative estimate possible. Maybe they're absolutely certain of the LTD through October, and they're absolutely certain of the Black Friday totals, so they just added those absolute certain numbers together and said "more than this."

Saying you sold 3 million when it ends up being 3.8 million is a positive surprise. Saying you sold 3.8 million when you sold anything less is a big hit.

People assuming there's an extra 800k in there is quite a leap.

It's just language. It just means they sold 3,034,400 or something. "Over 3 million"

Liabe Brave · Nov 28, 2018

Benji said:
Yeah I hadn't realized that Wii did a confirmed over 800k BF week alone.

That isn't confirmed.

Zedark said:
Yeah, 800k for 5 days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday is very impressive....

But not necessarily true. Here's the actual facts we know:

1. Wii 2007 did about 350k in 7 days at BF.
2. Wii 2008 did over double that, about 800k, in the comparable period.
3. Switch 2018 did more than Wii 2008, comparing the 5 days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

Combine 1 and 2, and you'll see that Wii 2008 could easily have been under 800k. For example, 335k in 2007 and 770k in 2008 (~2.3x) matches both statements.

Switch at 775k for this year reporting period would then meet statement 3. But in fact it could be even lower, because it's a 5-day period rather than a full week. So if Wii 2008 did 770k in 7 days, maybe it did 625k in the peak 5. So Switch this year could then be, say, 666k and still make all the statements true.

None of that is confirmed either, of course. The point is that Nintendo's previous statements are estimates with very few significant figures, so we can't use them for precise comparisons of any kind.

Bob Beat · Nov 28, 2018

Ridley327 said:
Holy crap.

Which wii Holiday season? All of them?

Wasn't that second holiday crazy? I know they are only talking about those few days but wow if it holds up.

Deleted member 18161 · Nov 28, 2018

Watch them Smash their 20 million prediction...

Never underestimate Nintendo, especially around the Holiday season when they have Pokemon and Smash lol...

Deleted member 2785 · Nov 28, 2018

This thread is awesome.

Calamari41 · Nov 28, 2018

Wiped said:
People assuming there's an extra 800k in there is quite a leap.

It's just language. It just means they sold 3,034,400 or something. "Over 3 million"

The "over 3 million turning into 3.8 million" figures are hard numbers from a historical example, though. I don't think anybody is saying that Nintendo is underestimating by that much this month. It's just being used as an example of Nintendo doing this kind of thing before. The idea is that the "more than 8.2 million" figure this month could be 8.4 or 8.5 million, which would make a lot more sense than 8.202 million

kvetcha · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
This thread is awesome.

I'm not entirely sure how to take this. Q.Q

NicknameMy · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
This thread is awesome.

Isn't the thread mostly just running in circles over and over again with nothing new?

Quinton · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
This thread is awesome.

This is, inexplicably, one of the best comments you've ever made here.

Deleted member 49804 · Nov 28, 2018

Liabe Brave said:
That isn't confirmed.

But not necessarily true. Here's the actual facts we know:

1. Wii 2007 did about 350k in 7 days at BF.
2. Wii 2008 did over double that, about 800k, in the comparable period.
3. Switch 2018 did more than Wii 2008, comparing the 5 days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

Combine 1 and 2, and you'll see that Wii 2008 could easily have been under 800k. For example, 335k in 2007 and 770k in 2008 (~2.3x) matches both statements.

Switch at 775k for this year reporting period would then meet statement 3. But in fact it could be even lower, because it's a 5-day period rather than a full week. So if Wii 2008 did 770k in 7 days, maybe it did 625k in the peak 5. So Switch this year could then be, say, 666k and still make all the statements true.

None of that is confirmed either, of course. The point is that Nintendo's previous statements are estimates with very few significant figures, so we can't use them for precise comparisons of any kind.

This is true.
And very important, as back in 2008 Wii had a huge baseline of units sold. Especially in the holidays.
Today sales are more concentrated towards the big "sales days" as pointed out here:

Welfare said:
Black Friday week sales history

Wii
2006: 476,000 (Launch)
2007: 350,000 / 36%
2008: 800,000 / 39%
2009: 550,000 / 44%
2010: 600,000 / 47%
2011: +500,000 / +58% (500K just on Black Friday, whole week unknown)
2012: 300,000 / 71%

Deleted member 46922 · Nov 28, 2018

skittzo0413 said:
Actually 200k according to Media Create, but this past week is behind YOY.

Japan's holiday period starts a bit later than the US's though apparently, so we should start seeing some major gains the week Smash launches.

I'm curious what ratio you're using to extrapolate that.

Also this 3.8M will be sell-through, and the FY goal is shipments. 18.7M sell through this FY could well indicate 20M or more in shipments.

2.2 x US sales, and the last 3 months being about 37 percent of the worldwide november/december numbers, but sold, not shipped, shipped depends on how fast Nintendo can produce their concoles to meet their own goals.
It's just my way of thinking BTW, I could be completely wrong. :)

Benji · Nov 28, 2018

kvetcha said:
I'm not entirely sure how to take this. Q.Q

Not sure if hes being sarcastic or not here but personally I think it's been pretty great

Lots of sales talk and trying to break down figures from PR. Honestly reminds me of the old sales threads when we would get semi vague PR all the time

julian · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
This thread is awesome.

Laughing at us while you half listen to your meeting?

Skittzo · Nov 28, 2018

So I've been looking at least year's IR results and "the Americas" seems to consistently account for ~39% of global Switch shipments, both in Q2 and Q3 of last year. Would it be fair to estimate that 30 of that 39% is from the US only?

If so, then if we're guessing 1.3M-1.4M for November and 2-2.5M for December, on top of the ~255k from October then we wind up with ~3.55 ~ 4.15M for Q3 sell-through.

I'm not sure how shipments will relate but let's add 10% for shipments. So ~3.9 to ~4.5M for shipments in Q3 for the US. Using the 30% of global sales assumption above that gets us 13-15M units shipped.

Even if we remove shipments from the equation we still get 11.8-13.8M.

So if our lowest assumption is 11.8M then we need 3.2M shipments in Q4 to reach 20M. They did 2.92M last Q4 with only Bayo 1 + 2 and Kirby, this year they will easily pass 3.2M.

------------

Basically, if this math is accurate even a little bit (I concede that it very well may not be) then their 20M goal is a lot easier than I thought with a 1.3-1.4M November in the US.

EDIT: If we give the US a more conservative 35% rather than 30% we wind up with ~11M to 13M for shipments. Still doable.

Bob Beat said:
Which wii Holiday season? All of them?

Wasn't that second holiday crazy? I know they are only talking about those few days but wow if it holds up.

They're only talking about the 5 day period from Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday, not the entire holiday season. But yes, this has surpassed that same period each year for the Wii.

Deleted member 32018 · Nov 28, 2018

Liabe Brave said:
So Switch this year could then be, say, 666k and still make all the statements true

That would then make last year around 310k based on the 115% increase which seems a little bit low to me but yeah I guess it's still possible.

Deleted member 2785 · Nov 28, 2018

Y'all jaded. I'm honestly stoked that so many people are applying different methodology to extrapolate what's going on. It's legit fun to see and exciting to have peeps be so into it. I live for this stuff.

Xevross · Nov 28, 2018

Benji said:
Not sure if hes being sarcastic or not here but personally I think it's been pretty great

Lots of sales talk and trying to break down figures from PR. Honestly reminds me of the old sales threads when we would get semi vague PR all the time

Lol yep, trying to work out sales from vague PR statements has always been a lot of fun, I missed threads like these. Thanks Nintendo.

Skittzo · Nov 28, 2018

Davy said:
2.2 x US sales, and the last 3 months being about 37 percent of the worldwide november/december numbers, but sold, not shipped, shipped depends on how fast Nintendo can produce their concoles to meet their own goals.
It's just my way of thinking BTW, I could be completely wrong. :)

I was just curious, no worries!

I doubt that 2.2x ratio is accurate. Last year in Q3 "the Americas" combined accounted for 39% of global shipments, whereas the 2.2x number would suggest 45% of global sales from the US alone.

K Samedi · Nov 28, 2018

skittzo0413 said:
So I've been looking at least year's IR results and "the Americas" seems to consistently account for ~39% of global Switch shipments, both in Q2 and Q3 of last year. Would it be fair to estimate that 30 of that 39% is from the US only?

If so, then if we're guessing 1.3M-1.4M for November and 2-2.5M for December, on top of the ~255k from October then we wind up with ~3.55 ~ 4.15M for Q3 sell-through.

I'm not sure how shipments will relate but let's add 10% for shipments. So ~3.9 to ~4.5M for shipments in Q3 for the US. Using the 30% of global sales assumption above that gets us 13-15M units shipped.

Even if we remove shipments from the equation we still get 11.8-13.8M.

So if our lowest assumption is 11.8M then we need 3.2M shipments in Q4 to reach 20M. They did 2.92M last Q4 with only Bayo 1 + 2 and Kirby, this year they will easily pass 3.2M.

------------

Basically, if this math is accurate even a little bit (I concede that it very well may not be) then their 20M goal is a lot easier than I thought with a 1.3-1.4M November in the US.

EDIT: If we give the US a more conservative 35% rather than 30% we wind up with ~11M to 13M for shipments. Still doable.

They're only talking about the 5 day period from Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday, not the entire holiday season. But yes, this has surpassed that same period each year for the Wii.

I think this year the shipment will be distrubuted differently with more stock available. Last year was mostly Nintendo trying to keep up with demand and probably just distributing it more
evenly. This year I believe the US split will be higher than 30%.

MisterHero · Nov 28, 2018

MELLO said:
This avatar funny as hell lol

Sakurai's my buddy, he'll make my dreams come true. ;_;

Mory Dunz · Nov 28, 2018

wow, at 300 bucks?

if next year has a price drop, pokemon and something else, wonder if it would come close.

Mbolibombo · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
This thread is awesome.

More importantly; What did you have for lunch and did you manage to weazle out if your conference call?

kvetcha · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
Y'all jaded. I'm honestly stoked that so many people are applying different methodology to extrapolate what's going on. It's legit fun to see and exciting to have peeps be so into it. I live for this stuff.

I'm glad you're enjoying it as much as we are. ;)

Skittzo · Nov 28, 2018

K Samedi said:
I think this year the shipment will be distrubuted differently with more stock available. Last year was mostly Nintendo trying to keep up with demand and probably just distributing it more
evenly. This year I believe the US split will be higher than 30%.

That's very possible, yeah.

Mr. Fantastic · Nov 28, 2018

MatPiscatella said:
This thread is awesome.

why are you the way you are?

Deleted member 1413 · Nov 28, 2018

Mory Dunz said:
wow, at 300 bucks?

if next year has a price drop, pokemon and something else, wonder if it would come close.

Black Friday and cyber Monday had the first discounts/bundles at $299 outside of the Fortnite one.
I do think if they can reach their goals by March without a price drop, Switch is going to have a pretty stellar 2019

PR: Switch surpasses Wii in best-selling Nintendo console in US on BF+CM. +115% HW over 2017

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