Switch HW Sales(Jul 9-Sep 2,2018)
Code:
Week 28 - 50.239(+14%)
Week 29 - 53.745(+7%)
Week 30 - 48.370(-10%)
Week 31 - 50.799(+5%)
Week 32 - 50.143(-1%)
Week 33 - 54.647(+9%)
Week 34 - 46.259(-15%)
Week 35 - 42.151(-9%)
TOTAL: 396.353
Average p/w: 49.544
Switch SW Sales(Jul 9-Sep 2,2018)
Code:
Week 28 - 245.654(+126%)
Week 29 - 210.786(-14%)
Week 30 - 170.554(-31%)
Week 31 - 187.869(+10%)
Week 32 - 177.606(-5%)
Week 33 - 183.500(+3%)
Week 34 - 128.783(-30%)
Week 35 - 109.541(-15%)
TOTAL: 1.414.293
Average p/w: 176.786
Overall Switch this year ended up moving as much software as it did last year despite moving much lower amount of hardware.
I had
personally predicted a much stronger period for the Switch in terms of both hardware and software. Nintendo ended up selling around
23% less hardware compared to last year, personally I had predicted over
550K would move during the period and ended up way off.
Software
In terms of the Software its
remarkable how close 2018 is to 2017 - we are talking
1.414.293 vs
1.410.156, whilist yours truelly thought it would be over >
1.64M.
I had thought that with the Switch being the only system during the vacation - retailers and Nintendo would be more aggressive and discount games or the Switch temproarly to create events around their stores. Since there was no major game launching this year on any system - I'm suprised that we didn't see a bigger effort from retailers to move both hardware and Switch games considering there was nothing else coming.
Labo Corner
I also didn't see any sort of discount for Labo for Obon which is something I thought they'd do to get more kids with the kits. Overall I don't think retailers have fully sold their first shipment but don't appear to be in a hurry to use bombabins, expecting Labo Corners to become a thing for retailers once they have to sell and market 4 different kits. I'm still banking on Variety and Robot dropping in price once Vehicle comes out, but we shall see.
eShop wins this holiday
Personally because of this I anticipate eShop did the relative best(not in terms of overall value but just in terms of growth compared to last year), Nintendo had a couple of their titles discounted by
33% on the eShop(
MK8D;
1-2 Switch;
Arms), a shortage of
Octopath physical copies which probably lead to decent sales on their eShop, and a bunch of well received indie games launching
Overcooked 2,
Hollow Knight, Dead Cells - Overcooked 2 in particular hasn't exited the
top 3 on the eShop since launching; Hollow Knight is still
top 10 and Dead Cells just launched and is doing great despite the competition. Honestly Overcooked 2 is the type of game that could easily sell
>100K physical lifetime if they printed it. Nintendo has done a lot to popularlize indie games with their News Feed, Events and YouTube coverage.
September October period
Next 8 weeks should be strong for the Switch, I think we will see big numbers for the end of the quarter and Super Mario Party's launch. Overall I'm predcting something like
13% growth YoY from 2017, when it sold
442.948 mainly due to the
Super Mario Odessey launch(
126.701) and end of quarter week(
73.231). We have a much bigger variety of titles compared to 2017 and this should help with maintaining a higher baseline with similar highs. I think for Super Mario Party we will see
>100K sales; while end of quarter will be
>70K while the baseline for the rest of the weeks will end up at around
55K. 3DS(2012) will still end up the best hardware seller but only by about
6% as Switch will beging to outperform 3DS's 2012, because it's entering the strong period of the year with much bigger titles compared to 3DS which only had Animal Crossing as a hardware mover in 2012. On the Switch I think we have many games that could end up selling
>1M lifetime - YW4, Smash Ultimate, Pokemon Lets Go, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Super Mario Party, with an outside chance of Labo Kits also selling strongly in the fall.
On the software front Switch(2018) will end up the winner as 2017 did
1.11M while in 2012 3DS sold
1.26M units of physical software. Last year SMO & Splatoon 2 made up over
50% of the overall sales during this period, the 3rd best selling game was Pokken with
100K sales.
Prediction for next 8 weeks:
1) Super Mario Party
>650K
2) Drive Kit
>250K
3) Splatoon 2
>230K
4) Minecraft
>200K
5) FIFA 19
>100K
6) Mario Tennis Aces
>95K
7) DBFZ
>85K
8) Dark Souls
>85K
9) Taiko
>80K
10) Valkyria Chronicles 4 Warriors Orochi 3 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
>75K
So I'm going with around
2M units of software for the next 8 weeks. Banking on a big Super Mario Party launch, Drive Kit ending up more appealing than Variety & Robot combined, a couple of evergreens continuing to be constantly in the top 5(Minecraft & Splatoon 2), MK8D hanging inside the top 10, FIFA 19 performing much stronger right out of the gate and a whole bunch of games both old and new doing strongly. Games like Kirby, SMO, Taiko might drop out of the top 20, but they'd continue to sell around
5K per week outside of the charts.
Overall 2018 Switch remained ahead of 2017 numbers despite Splatoon 2, while SMO launch was huge it only came during the last week of the period we are looking at. At the same time we have a bigger variety of titles that will sell close to
100K, last year the
5th best selling game during this period was Fire Emblem Warriors -
53K sales.
Paid Online Effect
Personally I think we will see a major reveal for Splatoon 2 tomorrow, and the paid online might become another source of demand for the Switch. There is obviously the
NES Classic games but the other long term effect is Splatoon 2 owners having to sub. All those should get a discount as paid subscribers which might lead to digital sales really starting to take of on the Switch in Japan. I'm cautiously optimistic that we will get at least
10% discount which should help some transition to digital purchases especially for certain Nintendo games at launch. Overall next quarter's results for digital revenue should be interesting and should help us to better anticipate what might happen in the fall.