Good and bad news.

Nintendo of America claims that during the Thanksgiving weekend (from November 23 to 27, as we have to include Cyber Monday, too), they sold over 250 million dollars of products, making the Nintendo Switch sell the most. Although we don’t know how many of them were sold during the weekend, it broke records, and in North America, the Switch is at 8.2 million sold consoles. (3DS: 22 million, NES: Classic: 2 million, SNES Classic: 2.5 million.) Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee already hit 1.5 million sales, and even Super Mario Party hit a million. Year-on-year, software sales increased by 78, while hardware sales jumped by 45%, respectively.

Bloomberg thinks that Nintendo‘s goal (reaching 38 million sold consoles by March 2019) won’t be reached and they will fall short by 3 million. It impacted their stocks: from January’s ~435-dollar price, it dropped under 300, as even Nintendo Labo (with its cardboard) didn’t sell as well as the big N thought it would.

Thus, Cornelio Ash, the analyst at William O’Neil & Co Inc., thinks that the Nintendo Switch doesn’t have a good second year, even though all consoles should have one, and this is why the previous predictions of hitting 90 million sales in five years might not happen. Michael Pachter, the famous analyst at Wedbush, says the Switch should see a price cut to under 200 dollars (meaning a 33% cut) to reach as big of an audience the Wii could achieve before – while there are games like Metroid Prime 4 (which could be shown at The Game Awards), a new, „core” Pokémon RPG, and a new Animal Crossing in development, as well as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate hitting shelves in a week, they are unlikely to reach a big audience.

So, at the moment, the Switch’ long-term success can be questioned.

Source: WCCFTech, GamesIndustry