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[Jaded Alyx]

I will pick one up eventually when there's a Zelda pack in model.

I don't see this happening.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

I think reasons 2 and 3 are correct but reason 1 probably is not much of a factor, other than to explain the underlying basis for reason 3.

My point regarding reason 1 is that Sony and Microsoft manufacture a lot more products, so it's likely easier and quicker for them to ramp up production when needed. They also just seem to be better in general when it comes to supply chain management. That's not to say I believe Nintendo engages in "artificial scarcity" or anything silly like that.

 

[Meier]

280k seems low. Is stock still constrained?

It's safe to say it will be through til the end of the year IMO. It'll just constantly sell out the second they get them.

 

[Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule]

from the prediction thread

The biggest April ever recorded in the 8th gen is the PS4 with 199K in 2014. Second biggest? XB1 with 187K in 2015.

April is usually low.

 

[Deku89]

While a little lower than I thought, it's understandable. They took shipments from April to March and the increased manufacturing hasn't hit yet.

It'll be interesting at what point they hit demand. I'm starting to doubt it'll be this year.

 

[Buggy Loop]

You can't ramp up production in a speedy manner, it's not just like flipping a switch (hur dur dur). They were very conservative with output, considering what happened with WiiU, but now i hope they are recalculating numbers for the upcoming months/year, they have a hit on their hands, every customer walking into a store to buy it and not having any on shelves, is a potential customer loss.

 

[Serenitynow]

from the prediction thread



April is usually low.

Switch breaking more records here, then.

 

[Scrawnton]

Maybe 10million for the year was an accurate number. How can supply be this constrained?

 

[TAS]

Is Foxconn the only one assembling Switches? They need more hands on deck lol.

 

[Zedark]

While a little lower than I thought, it's understandable. They took shipments from April to March and the increased manufacturing hasn't hit yet.

It'll be interesting at what point they hit demand. I'm starting to doubt it'll be this year.

Yeah, this April number is understandable when you factor in the shipments taken from April with those air freight shipments. I am worried about May, since the Media Create threads show is that shipments are currently even worse than they were in April, so that doesn't instill me with confidence May will be up from April.

 

[johnny956]

While a little lower than I thought, it's understandable. They took shipments from April to March and the increased manufacturing hasn't hit yet.

It'll be interesting at what point they hit demand. I'm starting to doubt it'll be this year.

Currently supply hasn't increased in Japan in May either so hard to hit demand when it seems like supply is dropping

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

Nothing stops the Switch train until 2018 in NPD.

 

[Seik]

Maybe 10million for the year was an accurate number. How can supply be this constrained?

My guess is that Nintendo took their April shipments to try to cover the unexpected demand for March, leaving April solely on what they're able to produce.

They declared they will ramp production up, but this doesn't happen with a finger snap.

 

[Trago]

not necessarily if they will hold back quantities for the holidays

I didn't even think about that.

 

[marmoka]

Stock problems and still both console and game were Number 1?

Congratulations Nintendo!

 

[Mass Appeal]

I have friends in So Cal looking for a Switch daily and they are having no luck. 4 guys calling everyday to every Best Buy and Target within a 50 mile radius(they refuse to support Gamestop with their bundles)


People who say there is no supply constraint are just lying to themselves. Obviously I don't know about the rest of the state's but it's really hard to find one on shelves around here. One of my buddies who has one is a manager at Best Buy and he says as soon as they receive afew, they are gone within hour.

 

[Okami Haundo]

Wii did 360k: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_April_2007

Wouldn't it be a better comparison to track Wii's first month of sales vs. it's second month and track the increase/decline in production?

Edit: Just looked it up for the US...

November 2006 (Launched the 19th)
- 476k

December 2006 (Full month sales)
- 604k

January 2006
- 436k

 

[Instro]

Honest question; why are Nintendo having issues keeping up with demand? Sony and Microsoft didn't have this problem, or at least not as bad, did they?

Is Microsoft a good example in all of this? The One was terribly overshipped.

 

[Waylon Drums]

Never, ever, did I think Nintendo could bounce back like this. Good for them, let's hope they can sustain it.

 

[Zedark]

Wouldn't it be a better comparison to track Wii's first month of sales vs. it's second month and track the increase/decline in production?

Not necessarily, since Wii launched in the holidays and therefore Nintendo will have predicted big sales in the second month as well. Of course, the current comparison isn't great either, but it is what was asked. There's simply no direct comparison between the two situations possible yet.

 

[Skittzo0413]

Wouldn't it be a better comparison to track Wii's first month of sales vs. it's second month and track the increase/decline in production?

Not really, since companies will always hold back their supply for the holiday season. It could be very possible that a certain percentage of Switches being produced now are going to sit in warehouses until they can be shipped during the holiday season.

 

[ASIS]

Wouldn't it be a better comparison to track Wii's first month of sales vs. it's second month and track the increase/decline in production?

Edit: Just looked it up for the US...

November 2006 (Launched the 19th)
- 476k

December 2006 (Full month sales)
- 604k

January 2006
- 436k

It doesn't work since Wii Launched in holidays whereas Switched launched in March.

 

[Falchion]

I would expect the Switch to lead the hardware sales for the rest of the year since it's so new and there will be big games coming out for it.

 

[Clefargle]

Good for them. I honestly thought this system was going to crater and kill the company, and I'm thrilled to be wrong.

I still don't get the immediate appeal, personally, considering the only two games worth a damn are Wii U ports, but it's all good. I will pick one up eventually when there's a Zelda pack in model.

lol, don't hold your breath. The way you said all of this reeks of salt, even though it looks like you took pains to sweeten up the wording.

 

[Okami Haundo]

Not necessarily, since Wii launched in the holidays and therefore Nintendo will have predicted big sales in the second month as well. Of course, the current comparison isn't great either, but it is what was asked. There's simply no direct comparison between the two situations possible yet.

Not really, since companies will always hold back their supply for the holiday season. It could be very possible that a certain percentage of Switches being produced now are going to sit in warehouses until they can be shipped during the holiday season.

Gotya! Thanks for the input guys, I guess launching outside of the Holiday season really throws things out of whack here.

 

[Bioshocker]

May should be interesting. Stock is good at least here in Sweden now.

 

[Thebullfrog]

We'll know by May if things have improved which is for Switch hardware numbers to be higher than 280k for NPD.

You do realize May is 2/3 of the way over right?

 

[Gotdatmoney]

Wouldn't it be a better comparison to track Wii's first month of sales vs. it's second month and track the increase/decline in production?

Edit: Just looked it up for the US...

November 2006 (Launched the 19th)
- 476k

December 2006 (Full month sales)
- 604k

January 2006
- 436k

Comparing March and April to November and December will never ever make sense.

 

[Zedark]

You do realize May is 2/3 of the way over right?

But we have no numbers for May, which is what he means. We'll have to wait about a month before we know how much the Switch sold/shipped in May.

 

[Skittzo0413]

You do realize May is 2/3 of the way over right?

I think he means the May NPD numbers will help us understand the stock/production situation.

 

[E-phonk]

Maybe 10million for the year was an accurate number. How can supply be this constrained?

Even just shipping from China to the US takes ~20 days. If they want to up the production they need to open additional lines. They also need additional parts (screens, motherboards, ram, flash, X1's, ... etc). Some of these are custom made, so in that case their supplies would also need to do additional production/QA/shipment etc..

All this together means that if they decided to go for a higher production volume during march, you won't see a huge increase until summer.

 

[Hilarion]

If US is 280k, we can safely say worldwide is ~3.5 million by end of April, right?

 

[Futureman]

So even though Wii launched during the holidays, Switch is ahead on the 2-month total (+106K).

that's pretty damn good. Hopefully Nintendo can get more stock to market.

 

[Unknown?]

from the prediction thread



April is usually low.

Yeah supply constraints but being April is as much a factor too.

 

[ggx2ac]

You do realize May is 2/3 of the way over right?

I mean May NPD. I ended up traveling back to April for some reason.

 

[Turrican3]

I see it pretty much everywhere on shelves and even Amazon.it/.es/.de/.co.uk carries it.

That's not true as of now.

UK: stock due 25th may
ES: scalpers only
FR: scalpers only
DE: out of stock

The only one having stock available is Italy, definitely not the strongest european market for Nintendo (IIRC that would be Germany and France).

 

[MrCookiepants]

Xbox 360 sold 280k in its second month (December) with shortages.

 

[IronicSonic]

Must be fun to see how logistics department at Nintendo is managing this

 

[ReitStuff]

The only one having stock available is Italy, definitely not the strongest european market for Nintendo (IIRC that would be Germany and France).

Italians don't like Mario?! Mamma Mia!!!

 

[iswasdoes]

Great to see nintendo doing well again. I really cant understand why people think it would be better with them out of the hardware market, they show so many times (switch probably the best example) that you need innovators to create the products noone knew they wanted.

 

[Zedark]

That's weird though, switch is readily available in Europe.
Here in Italy every major retailer has stock, I see it pretty much everywhere on shelves and even Amazon.it/.es/.de/.co.uk carries it.

And it's not like Nintendo systems don't sell here. Could there be such disparity in stock supplies between regions?

EDIT: I guess making people import from Europe is all according to the artificial scarcity keikaku.

Except if you actually go to those pages you'll see that they are all out of stock, in fact, and only scalpers are offering units at inflated prices. So no evil keikaku here.

 

[Thebullfrog]

I think he means the May NPD numbers will help us understand the stock/production situation.

Well, I mean...obviously *slinks away to the corner*

 

[Obliterator]

280k seems... low? Stock that bad?

As I mentioned in a different thread, stock was mostly dead / non-existent for the first half of the month. We didn't see large shipments up until right near the end of the month.

 

[noshten]

MK8D is now also the top selling game in France for 2017 on Amazon.fr, second major market MK8D has reached this milestone after US.

 

[NSESN]

So basically Nintendo shipped April stock to improve the situation for launch. With Arms only launching in June I don't expect the situation to improve in May.

 

[Zedark]

As I mentioned in a different thread, stock was mostly dead / non-existent for the first half of the month. We didn't see large shipments up until right near the end of the month.

How about this month? Has the first half of May been any better?

 

[NolbertoS]

Great to see nintendo doing well again. I really cant understand why people think it would be better with them out of the hardware market, they show so many times (switch probably the best example) that you need innovators to create the products noone knew they wanted.

Thats why I love Nintendo's innovative culture. When there backs are against the wall, they come up with crazy new exciting products. Hope Nintendo can keep churning more innovative hardware in years to come

 

[Sapiens]

Well deserved. It's a great system.

 

[The Main Event]

from the prediction thread



April is usually low.

Well looking at it this way, damn impressive.

 

[MasterSheen]

Mario Kart 8 sold 415k in its first two days for reference