Given what a colossal flop the Nintendo Wii U was and how many were skeptical about Nintendo’s ability to recover from that blunder, we guess we can’t blame for Nintendo to be a bit wary when launching the Switch. This is why the company had initially planned to ship 2 million units by the end of March.However it turns out that the Switch was such a hit that according to Nintendo, the demand for the console has exceed the company’s worldwide estimates. This is according to a statement provided to MCV UK by Nintendo, “For Nintendo Switch, our initial plan for the fiscal year ended March 2017 was to ship two million units by the end of March, but we increased production which resulted in shipping 2.74 million units globally.”
“For products like Nintendo Switch, it takes time to procure parts and run production, so we perform demand estimates far in advance of launch. Actual demand following the launch of these products surpassed our estimates globally.” This doesn’t really come as a surprise, especially when you consider that the Japanese market accounts for at least 1 million console sold.
In fact recently an article on Kotaku highlighted how difficult it is to obtain a Switch in Japan, where customers had to first obtain a raffle ticket, which if they won would allow them a chance to buy the console, which means that even if you had a raffle it didn’t necessarily mean you could buy one.
The rest of Nintendo’s statement reads, “To take advantage of this favorable momentum, we will continue to bolster our manufacturing facilities and strive to increase production in preparation for the Christmas period, which has been factored into our forecast of shipping 10 million units globally by the end of this fiscal year.”
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