So. Apparently we got the first glance at Nintendo Switch 2 sales data at some point over the past 24 hours, depending on where you live of course. The sources I’m looking at are claiming the Nintendo Switch 2 has shipped 3.5 million units worldwide in its first four days. Why four days and not just the whole first week, I’m not sure, I’m sure there’s a reason they did that but this… this honestly worries me for the console’s success. That sounds crazy to say, especially when Quarter 3 (October-December) hasn’t even started yet and the holiday season is typically where a large portion of sales for new and current hardware comes in. But let me explain.
It’s generally pretty tricky to get actual data on this kind of thing, but I would be willing to bet that most individual people aren’t going to be purchasing more than one of this thing. Families and friend groups are still likely to have multiple purchased units, to be fair, but on average, even if we assume a family of anywhere from four to six people, you’re looking at probably an average of only one to two, maybe three at most, Switch 2 units per household. There will be outliers to that, of course, but the idea that most people won’t buy multiple of the same product, especially in the economic situations of Nintendo’s biggest consumer markets, remains the same.
This is where the problem starts. When a new product sees record breaking growth immediately out of the gate, this can indirectly hurt the sustainability of the product going forward. In spite of its high starting price points, the Switch 2 currently seems to be thriving in large part because of all of the hype around it. But speaking as someone that grew up during the rise and fall of an entire gaming genre that dominated the mid-2010s- if you know, you know- what happens when market over-saturation and significantly decreased consumer interest start to kick in? “Hype cycles” for new games and especially new hardware don’t last forever, and the Switch 2 is only going to face more, newer, stronger competition during its fiscal lifespan.
Nintendo has already stated they project to ship 15 million Switch 2 units during the console’s first year. For comparison, the original Switch ended up at just around that mark during its first year; 14.86 million to be exact. Nintendo’s “sequel consoles” (SNES, GBA, 3DS, Wii U, etc.) historically haven’t performed as well as their previous iterations, especially in the Wii U’s case, and knowing the console had such a strong first four days or whatever, I worry that Nintendo’s console hype is using up a lot of fuel in too quick of a rate. Nintendo could very easily reach their quarterly and yearly projections if this keeps up, but they could just as easily run out of steam if they eventually reach a point where there’s no reason for consumers to help sustain this product.
Edit: I just found that out of that 3.5 million figure, a projected 3 million of those come from pre-orders and Day 1 sales combined. That’s incredible for Day 1 metrics, but not for Days 2-4.
