Nintendo to increase production of Switch to 16 million Switch next FY (up from 8m)!

SOURCE:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-to-double-production-of-switch-console-1489728545

STORY:

Company plans to manufacture 16 million or more in year starting April 1, up from an initial plan for eight million

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Can't actually quote anything more than that since I don't have an account there. Still this is wonderful news! They're confident enough in the sales of the device that they'll now produce more units in a single year than what the WiiU managed to sell during it's FULL LIFETIME!! Comeback confirmed? All signs seem to point that way.

Opinions, System Warriors?

Well, clearly the Switch has hit the ground running, which is good for them. That said, a year is a long time, and if Nintendo don't follow up the strong launch with more games, support and updates, etc., to keep the momentum rolling, they may quickly find themselves sitting on a very large pile of unsold Switches.

holy sheee-ite

they went from a cautious posture of wait and see to straight up struttin' around, pelvic thrusting in all directions xD

i mean, the switch has gotten of to an auspicious start and it's clearly made them confident but i think they may want to reel it in a bit. i'm sure these projections are units shipped but still...that's a mighty big gamble.

gaffers are speculating that this optimism seems to indicate an as-yet-known title being released this year.

poh-key-mans this holiday? :O

@22Toothpicks: Pretty sure it's literally 99% confirmed. It came from the same leakers that got a loooot of stuff right. So, all we need to do is wait. Nintendo can win E3 with just 3D Pokemon (PROPER Pokemon at that, not the figthing games crap) hehe :P We'll see, we'll see, but I'm very confident on that.

I mean, even if not now, at some point it will come for sure. The 3DS will slowly die down and now they don't have any other platform to launch the games on besides the Switch.

Only Nintendo can **** this up and by fucking it up I mean not releasing enough titles to keep the interest up. You can already see, that they put a lot of faith to Zelda alone. The eShop is barren, if they keep releasing 2-4 indie titles per week the interest is certainly going to dry up.

I know I said I'd play my other consoles between major Nintendo releases, but right now I'd really just like to play games on my Switch. They should have started gathering games to eShop way earlier and not start when the console is already out.

I foresee a $149 Switch flash sale in the near future.

@skektek: Your vision is good.

There's no way. The freaking Wii U is still $299

They closely modeled this launch to mirror the Wii with a little bit of 3DS on the side.

All they need now is a segment on a late night show with some celebrities playing 1-2 Switch and they're going to be printing all da monies.

Nope.

But there will be a Mini Switch for $250 at some point with mario kart packed in.

@Bread_or_Decide:

I... ...doubt we'll see a Switch Mini. It would mean throwing out and replacing a whole line of Gen 1 accessories. That would be expensive.

Instead, I predict Gen 2 Switch to be more like a "Switch Pro." I'm thinking 16 nm die shrink, better battery life, possibly a move to X2 with Pascal GPU and more RAM, and maybe even a 1920x1080 screen. The form factor would be the same.

The "pro" model does seem to be the way of the world these days. Just like the "new" 3D they came out with. Yeah, I can see that happening.

Nah, if the Pro and Scorpio catch on, I can see Nintendo doing something similar with a Switch 2.0 (or even 1.5 if need be). With better internals, working like Pro (all past and future games working on ALL models), some improvements here and there where need be and just keep on trucking basically.

Arguably the iterative upgrade for the Switch makes even more sense, as it's been a thing on the portable side of things for a while now. Though I don't see it any sooner than another year and half, two years really. Any sooner than that would be kinda rushed/forced.

I think he's predicting they will have trouble selling 16 million since that is an aggressive increase in production, and most people predict the sales will dry up unless Nintendo starts cranking out games to match. Glut of inventory can lead to deals, if the sales pace drops off. My guess is Nintendo makes these things for cheap, and thus have some leeway to stuff more inventory into the channel. It's a low end tablet with low end screen, it might only cost them like $50-75 to make at this point like other low end KMART tablets. Even the dock is cheap. The only wildcard are the joycons, and I'm guessing they aren't exactly expensive pieces of tech either relative to other game controllers.

With Wii-U they never cut price because they never bothered to increase production, some retailers of course did have firesales on Wii-U, but for the most part stocks for Wii-U were always somewhat limited and thus no "clearance" was ever necessary. Not even at the end. The Wii-U wasn't "clearanced", it just ceased to exist at retail. Wii-U failure was unique in that it was a failure they were willing to just sit on and eat for 2 or 3 full years, even though the obvious thing should have been to cut the price and make a revised console. Basically at that point they had the 3DS to somewhat fall back on, but that is no longer the case.

Supply and demand. That's the free market. The demand is trending high so they are looking to increase supply. Good for Nintendo, good for consumers, good for my NTDOY stock price.

AS i said before numerous times , Switch is not if it will sell alot or not. I dont give a damn about sales. The biggest best when it comes to Switch is how well will do thru time when it comes to software. Who cares if Switch end up selling as good as Wii but at the same time end up in a serious life support after 2-3 years ?

Sadly we dont play sales , we play games. Thats Switch biggest bet and not if will sell better than Wii U or PS4 or whatever. And before someone tells me " Hater , look what its coming " should remember that was exactly the same case with Wii and Wii U . A strong year or two .. then ... silence.

So lets see.

Out of Stock == Loss of sale. Nintendo drop the ball on the hype train. If this was an Apple product the concept of out of stock doesn't exist. I don't understand how companies as shit old as Nintendo still have shortages. Its important to con people into buying your system when the hype is high and not allow scalpers to buyout the hardware.

@2Chalupas: Well said.

That's bold. Let's see if it pays off.

Mario better be good.

This is ambitious to say the least. E3 for the Switch better be a 3D Pokemon game, Metroid, and some third party AAA titles. It also better give a very clear message of how the online is going to work.

Switch is on the come-up!

They literally only need 5 minutes for E3.

Some dude enters the stage.

POKEMON BITCHES!

*short trailer*

Out in 2018.

*mic drop*.

Crowd loses it's mind.

If Pokemon doesn't come out this year, then Nintendo is out of its mind

@charizard1605: I assume 2018 because they have 3D Mario for this year, nothing else. If they manage to have both than that would be amazing!

That's what they did in 2014 lol, they released Mario 3D World and Pokemon on the exact same day

@charizard1605: Uhuhu. Getting excited now lol

@Desmonic: Haters are always gonna hate, and yes! Pokemon is probably a priority for Kimishima-san. Also, Kimi was president of the Pokemon Company of America anyways, so he knows he wants a Pokemon game on the Switch.

If that's not being confident I don't know what it is.

Good but they need to make sure they have flow of games incoming...& no just indie titles.. :P

they were probably guaranteed to increase production, with 8 million being more of a conservative base line. In the production business, it's probably easier to increase your commitment than decrease it.

But for sure, it could have been a lower increase than doubling. The Switch will be a success