After launching on March 3rd last month, the Nintendo Switch has managed to move a lot of units around the world. The system sold 1.5 million SKUs within its first week on the market. We haven’t had an update from Nintendo recently about what the install base is like, but the stats and retailer stock seem to show that the console is on the pathway to being a big seller for Nintendo.
According to Now In Stock, the major retailers are still all sold out, and they’ve stayed that way all throughout March.
Amazon briefly had a deal where you if you signed up for Amazon Prime you could get your hands on a $299.99 rendition of the Nintendo Switch, but that offer quickly sold out.
At the moment the most reliable means of getting your hands on a Switch is through scalpers and their overpriced offerings on eBay and Amazon. In fact, Amazon currently has 487 units from resellers starting at $403, with 19 used units starting at $399, and nine collectible units.
It’s noted that those 487 units may not all be legitimate, as many of those sellers literally just launched and have no review ratings nor any guarantee that they actually have a working unit on hand. It’s been advised to steer clear of those kind of scalpers.
As for legitimate retail outlets… they’ve been restocking supplies of the Nintendo Switch regularly, but they can’t seem to keep them on the store shelves. In fact, Wal-Mart got a restock just today on April 1st, 2017 and all of them were sold out in a matter of hours.
In North America getting your hands on a Nintendo Switch is a job in and of itself. According to Digitimes, the brisk sales of the Switch has given Nintendo confidence to move a lot more units this year than what we all originally thought. If momentum stays consistent, Nintendo expects to move 20 million SKUs throughout 2017.
According to Express UK, the Switch isn’t just selling out in North America, it’s also moving big numbers in Japan. It has already surpassed 519,000 SKUs sold in Japan between March 3rd and March 26th.
In the previous week the system sold 80,000 units in Japan. The article notes that the Nintendo Switch is currently outselling the PS4 in Japan during the same time-frame, in which Sony’s system only reached the 500,000 mark in japan after seven weeks of being on the market.
Comparatively, the Nintendo Switch has nearly sold 100,000 more SKUs in Japan than the PS4 within the same time frame. So we’ll see if they can maintain this pace and rhythm globally as they move through April. Software will obviously be the next big hurdle for the Switch in order to avoid the same fate as the Wii U.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, GameStop expects the Nintendo Switch to stay sold out at legitimate retailers for the remainder of 2017, which could mean that Nintendo’s 20 million estimate may not be too far off.
