re: Why can't Nintendo just make an appropriate amount of consoles at launch?

You can take me off the list. I'm not looking into buying at the moment

I don't know, but it was easy as heck pre-ordering the PS4. You didn't have be awake at 4:00 AM jamming F5 on the Amazon.com home page.

no question that you'd rather underestimate than overestimate and that for a brief window that scarcity gets buzz, but you only have x amount of time to sell y, and you want to sell as many of them as possible.

Walked into Target and picked one up this morning with Zelda. They had just received 9 more today..guess I lucked out.

quote:

---

And the ps4 launch by estimates had 3 times as many sold. 250k to 80k in the UK. I don't think other numbers are out yet.

---

Pretty sure that is first week sales for PS4 compared to weekend sales for Switch.

Also, as others have noted, the PS4 launched at different times in different regions while the Switch had a global launch.

And the PS4 released shortly before Holiday season, so sales would be inflated. Sony probably planned this and made sure they had enough units. Nintendo also could have done this, but then I wouldn't have been playing on my Switch all weekend because it wouldn't be out for another 6+ months.


By the time the Holidays roll around the console will have BotW, Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8, and plenty of smaller titles. Any kinks currently going on will have been worked out. The OS will have received more features.

Those of us right now with a Switch are the earlier adopters. We get to play with our new toy before others, but we also have to deal with some of the cons that come with getting the latest tech when it is brand new. The fact that the system is selling so well in mid March with basically only Zelda, a barebones UI, and some potential hardware defects means that it is primed for a great Holiday.

quote:

---

Pretty sure that is first week sales for PS4 compared to weekend sales for Switch.

Also, as others have noted, the PS4 launched at different times in different regions while the Switch had a global launch.

And the PS4 released shortly before Holiday season, so sales would be inflated. Sony probably planned this and made sure they had enough units. Nintendo also could have done this, but then I wouldn't have been playing on my Switch all weekend because it wouldn't be out for another 6+ months.

---

Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. The ps4 in just 1 day crushed it in America. I was looking at the early UK numbers, which is a pretty small sample size. I was just trying to say I guess I can see why the switch did not have as many units available. They may not have expected it to sell as much as it has. But it still is not acceptable IMO.

quote:

---

Friday was a banner day for Sony's video game division, with the company announcing over the weekend that it sold 1 million units of the newly launched PlayStation 4 in North America during its first 24 hours on store shelves. By our reckoning, that's the best first-day performance ever for a video game console on this side of the pond, easily besting the 600,000 Wiis Nintendo sold in its first eight days on North American store shelves in 2006.

---

So even if the first two days were better than the Wii, no way it was close to the ps4.

quote:

---

Pretty sure that is first week sales for PS4 compared to weekend sales for Switch.

---

Sales are tracked by Sunday to Saturday. First Week sales NEVER refers to the first 7 days on the market, but the sales for that week's tracking period. Every time.

It's a straight 1:1 comparison.

quote:

---

Launched first in America right? With best day one sales ever right? While it may have helped them with the stagger they clearly had their shite together.

---

It was North America, Western Europe, and handful of other countries. While it suffered in Japan for its launch by doing it late, it was the correct move overall.

I'm going to bump this thread because frick Nintendo

The new executive at Nintendo of Japan said they would not release the switch at a loss. Which essentially means less units in hope of more sales and less of a hit overall.


I would expect the sales to skyrocket by about summer. Super Mario Odyssey releases sort of late this year, Splatoon 2 comes out this summer, the Zelda DLC releases in winter this year, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It may be weak compared to the PS4, but once the first party titles bring in the sales, more Nier Automata type AAA game titles will roll in. I think Satoru Iwata's successor was a good choice. Dude's entire background for a few decades is finance and and banking. Satoru Iwata was a genius programmer, but a top notch CEO objectively he was not. He was very much the video game industry equivalent of a player's coach though.


Gonna be a sad day when the likes of Shigeru, Eiji and Sakurai aren't in the business anymore

The Wal-Mart near me had 8 sitting on a shelf out in the open. I thought about it but still couldn't justify buying one just for Zelda :( .