A day after we learned that Nintendo received 2.2 million pre-orders in their loyalty program in Japan alone, analysts are chiming in on the big numbers.
As reported by Takashi Mochizuki for Bloomberg, analysts provided forecasts between 6 million to 8 million units will be sold by the time of the Switch 2’s launch in June 5. Both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 sold 4.5 million units upon their launches, so the expectations are that the Switch 2 will clear even the bar those consoles set.
Mochizuki also got a direct quote from Pelham Smithers, of Japan equity research house Pelham Smithers Associates. Smithers said this:
“As Japan accounts for a third of the global Switch installation base, it implies 6.6 million pre-orders globally.”
David Gibson of MST Financial chimed in on this story on Twitter, and his analysis is truly mind-boggling. To quote Gibson:
“JP represents 36.8m of 150.9m Switch shipped, which is 24%. Hence its possible the 2.2m in Japan pre-orders is sign the demand is 9m+ globally for the launch.”
These are of course, differing opinions, but they aren’t coming from fanboys or content creators. If analysts who have access to the real business data the industry uses is making these projections, than the industry definitely expects the Switch 2’s launch to be at this scale of success and profit.
It should also be noted that not all countries and regions will get to buy a Switch 2, even at the official June 5 launch date for the biggest markets. Nintendo in Taiwan just revealed that the console could be releasing between July to September. Nintendo in Singapore made similar announcements earlier this month, and they provide distribution of Nintendo products in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Interestingly, Nintendo Taiwan has already provided a price for the Switch 2 at NT$ 14,380 in Taiwanese dollars. That’s equivalent to $ 442 in US dollars, making it slightly cheaper.
And the ongoing situation with the tariffs may be making Nintendo make such decisions, as they will eventually be unable to avoid pricing their products and services to account for tariffs. Of course, the same situation is true of PlayStation and Xbox, but Nintendo had the bad luck of having their console launch under these circumstances.
We may very well expect to see the full extent of global demand for the Switch 2 by the end of this year. The demand is high in the US and Japan, Nintendo’s biggest markets, as it is, that we will likely see some record setting numbers for that June launch as well.
