Nintendo Plan To Sell 2 Million Nintendo Switchs In March At A Profit

October 27, 2016

Last night Nintendo held their quarterly financial results briefing in Tokyo and while they stayed true to word and didn’t reveal any new information about the Nintendo Switch, they did reveal their initial sales expectations for the console.

As per the Wall Street Journal’s Takeshi Mochizuki on twitter, Nintendo revealed that they are forecasting two million Nintendo Switch consoles to be sold in its launch month of March. Tiis seems to be a conservative number that should be easily achievable. To put this in context the Playstation 4 sold 1 million in its first day on sale, while the WiiU has only sold 13 million total consoles since launch.

No price has been announced for the Nintendo Switch, but it seems that the final price hasn’t yet been decided on. CEO Tatsumi Kimishima advised that they are taking people’s feedback and comments in mind while deciding on a final price, but also confirmed that they will not sell the console at a loss.

While that sentence may seem like simple common sense to many, it’s been extremely common for other console manufacturers to use their consoles as a loss leader at launch to entice more people into the ecosystem and make the loss back from games and accessories. The most notable example of this is the Playstation 3 which was sold at a loss thanks to some extremely expensive bluray tech, despite selling for $999.95.

Unlike the Playstation 3, Nintendo should be able to achieve a reasonable price for the Nintendo Switch, with the lack of a 3D screen and Tegra chipset likely helping keeping costs down.

The Nintendo Switch is scheduled to release in March 2017.