Very High? I don't think Nintendo will allow itself to miss that sweet sweet Testfire Boost there.
On Switch, i disagree on not competing with PS4 there. Switch in Japan, i feel is competing with every front. Why this happen? Because the blur between handheld and console market is more or less no more. (Vita is dead and 3DS is gone while Switch tried to get both PS4 and 3DS market under it.)
So it is now going to be an all out fight for the pie which is japan gaming market.
I more meant in the west, as I stated in Japan, with Vita dying over the next 2 years and Nintendo killing off the 3DS over that same time frame, Switch should dominate there as PS4 so far seems to be selling around PS3's LTD (in a shorter time frame, but I expect PS5 to come sooner than PS4 came after PS3)
3DS sold nearly 5 million in its first year in Japan, I expect Switch to sell 3m to 5m depending on when Pokemon launches and a Monster Hunter announcement, I do think Switch will need to be bundled in Japan for it to really keep any sort of pace with 3DS's first year and will need a price cut next year along with Animal Crossing and maybe Yokai Watch.
Shipments for Switch in Japan so far are something like this:
1 - 350k
2 - 50k
3 - 50k
This is what I assume as well, Nintendo supposedly has 2.5 million available ww for March, with Reggie commenting that the original 2 million was for the first 3 weeks, so I'd be surprised if Nintendo doesn't ship a full 150k for the rest of March, targeting 600k shipped to Japan, I assume Nintendo is shipping the largest amount of devices to America, which is a more volatile market for them, with much more competition, striking there while they are still the hot product, I could see them shipping double to America, for those reasons, but I don't really have numbers to back it up, other than the 1.5 million reported for the first weekend, with Japan only selling 330k, and Europe probably selling ~400k America is the only place big enough to make up the majority of the difference IMO.
If Nintendo doubles shipment and still sells out the system won't face problems until Splatoon despite weak software output at first months.
I agree, Japan will likely buy into Switch, and as front loaded sales start to wane, Mario Kart should release right on que. Splatoon needs an early summer release to keep momentum high, and for us in the west, I hope it's around E3 so that it doesn't show up there, I'd rather Nintendo push unknown software, while Splatoon 2 has a very specific job to do in the Switch ecosystem, and that is help it sell in Japan through the slow months until possibly Pokemon and Mario come in the holidays.
