Nintendo representative director and president Tatsumi Kimishima seems extremely hopeful for the future of the Switch, but he also understands that resting on the laurels of its early success could be its undoing.
Right now Nintendo has its sights set on pushing 20 million more Nintendo Switch units before the end of their next fiscal year (March 2019) on top of 100 million units of software. Estimates put the Switch at around 20 million sold in total as of its worldwide launch on March 3, 2017. Kimishima is aware that this is a hurculean task.
Speaking at the meeting, he noted: “Our sales targets for Nintendo Switch hardware and software during this fiscal year will not be an easy challenge to meet, but we are putting all of our efforts into doing just that. If you look at our software lineup for the fiscal year that we showed at E3, you can see a relative trend that the titles that resonate most with consumers are concentrated toward the latter half. That is why I think the way Nintendo Switch hardware sells during this fiscal year will be slightly different from in the last. A simple comparison of hardware units sold during the first quarter of this fiscal year might not look as good as the units sold during this period in the prior fiscal year. However, this is something we expected, so this shift is well within expectations when looking at our software lineup for the entire fiscal year.”
He went on to praise Nintendo Labo, explaining that Nintendo is “grateful for the tremendous response [it’s] received,” and that they’re aware of the possibilities of bringing it to market in unconventional sales channels that don’t necessarily sell games. As most people pointed out the Switch’s lineup is stacked in the latter half of 2018 — Nintendo is making that patented huge Christmas push. Get ready to feel it in a few months!
The 78th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders [Nintendo]
Source: Destructoid Nintendo: Sales targets for Nintendo Switch ‘will not be an easy challenge to meet’