Three Months After Launch, People Are Still Queuing For Nintendo Switch Consoles In Japan

thats crazy & before mario as well. Good signs for the Switch

I really wish that Nintendo could get more Switches into stores not only because I am kind of wanting one but also because I am worried that by the time they do the popularity of the Switch will have died down. They need to strike while the iron is hot, I understand that it isn't easy keeping up with demand like this though. Once Dragon Quest 11 and Monster Hunter Generations XX comes out in Japan demand is going to go through the roof.

@Anguspuss On the one hand it may be a good thing, that people are willing to line up and try to get one, but this seems to be suggesting that there may be a significant stock issue. There was that article a few days ago saying Nintendo may be competing with the likes of Apple and others for parts for the Switch. If that is the case it may be a while before a steady supply is available.

I am glad that Nintendo is able to drum up this much anticipation though. As you said it does say some good things about the Switch.

We will shortly see numbers go up as the result of the order to increase production takes effect. . .ARMS release date will be well in Nintendo's sights. . .

Once again Nintendo under-estimates its sales and creates stupidity

Meanwhile, in Denmark you can find Switch available at every online retailer. You will literally find retailers witch a stock of more than hundred consoles, but I guess it has been a long time since we were really considered Nintendo territory. Denmark is mosly PlayStation land nowadays.

What a long queue...

The fools, the fools, the fools!

Shame on Nintendo for being so short sighted. There are no excuses.

Watch sales miraculously pick up when ARMS releases.

Either they really want to play Mario Kart and Zelda on their hands (which is not too surprising considering the average Japanese home size) or they want to prep for the release of Arms, Monster Hunter or Dragon Quest.

@Tetsuro Yeah because wanting to avoid overproduction and spending huge sums of money sourcing parts, manufacturing, distribution and storage on a novel and relatively untested product months to years before release coming off their least successful console to date into a fluid market known for its fickleness is no excuse for being cautious.

I hope there's time for the increase in production to be felt before Splatoon 2 arrives there or things could turn nasty.

In many ways this is good news though. It's certainly plausible that the Switch install base could overtake the PS4 in Japan by the end of 2018 and if it comes anywhere near then it'll be the format of choice for Japanese developers.

Being cautious is being losers. Nintendo do not bankrupt by providing more units to market, while they LOSE sales by providing less. And after 3 months they still can't deliver more than 25.000 units per month that are numbers of late life for a console as the Nintendo 3DS shows.
And eventually they will be unable to satisfy console demand spike for their new IP Arms.
So yes, shame on them.

@KJ85 they should ship some of those to the Netherlands, we always have stock issues on pretty much everything nintendo related

@StuTwo It will be a great system for sure, not sure it will overtake the PS4 sales though, thats a huge leap to overcome. Im not sure on the actual numbers but that is asking a lot of Nintendo!

@Tetsuro
You're very short sighted. Producing more console isn't just flipping a switch and plopping down another machine like you do in a game. Theres a financial risk to increasing production, because what are you going to do with all those resources when the hype dies down? Demand has spikes, a lot of them in the beginning (ps4 as example) but eventually they will go down and then its gonna be all right. This is nothing new in the electronics consumer market. Plus shortage creates hype.

seems like there's a wii situation going on in japan

@Mijzelffan I doubt that once Bergsala (the distributor in the Nordics) has bought units from Nintendo, they will be relocated to other countries, but I would wish the interest was more significant here in Denmark.

Although it is easy to get your hands on a console here, I doubt that you would be happy about the price. Normal prices on Switch range from DKK2790 - DKK3000, which corresponds to approximately €375 - €400. I guess that is the downside of not having Nintendo doing the buisness directly with retailers.

I was lucky enough to get my switch at launch for just DKK2000 (~ €265), but I got the only console my local toys store had received, and it was not an offer that applied to every store in the country.

Should go to Ireland there's loads apparently.

Doomed?

@Mooj738 not really! The PS4 is on decline and numbers aren't that impressive. The will finish first.

@Mooj738 The PS4 has only sold something like 4.5 million units in Japan so far. It's a huge success there but it's nothing like the untouchable knock out success that it's been in the West.

The Switch hasn't hit 1 million in Japan yet but it's getting close. I'm fairly confident that when the generation is over it'll have comfortably outsold the PS4 in Japan. The only question is how quickly it gets there.

I don't think it'll happen in 2018 either by the way - just that it plausibly could under the right circumstances.

@iMarkU You can store whatever you want wherever you want and hide it from whoverer you want, while you can't sell air.
Sony, Samsung invade the market and sells biggie, that's it.

@Tetsuro You can't hide it from your accountants or investors though.

Not all companies can afford to be Atari and bury excess unsold stock in a (literal) money pit in the desert. Infact not even Atari could afford that.

Maybe just as well there's no Pokemon yet. There'd be riots... or at least vigorous queuing. 😊

@StuTwo But they need not to bury anything, because before or later those consoles would find a sale. And production can be tuned down progressively, but lost sales are lost sales, and those reflect with the software too where is the big gain.

Admittedly 25.000 per week isn't high for a new product, so they should've been more bold with it. They instead thought at the Wii U and pitched short.

Nintendo 3DS initially has eventually been over produced, the thing did not sell like crazy, but they met all the potential sales without leaving the stores empty, and that has been good.

@Danpal65 The stock "issues" seem to be only in certain areas of the world. As some others posted here, in several other countries its very little wait or no wait at all to get a Switch. I'm in Canada and when I decided to finally buy a Switch it took one week and a few phone calls to local retailers.

What we often read as in "restock" tweets are like "Back in stock at Amazon, Gamestop, Best Buy,Toys R Us", etc. People don't bother looking at smaller or independent outlets that usually have a batch in stock every week. People should start looking there instead focusing on big brand stores. The price is the same in the end and your odds are better.

@kuliddar Which smaller/independent outlets have them? Nintendo only has a few major distributor/vendor partners and Gamestop is the #1. I don't think they've been injecting the limited supply into grey distribution channels (at least not in the US...but it's still NoA either way.) so I'm not sure how independent stores have been getting any.

@Tetsuro I think you've got it a little sideways, 25000 a week isn't the total production figure. That's the quantity that seems to be allocated just to Japan. 100k a month in Japan. There's a little over a million a month (250,000+ a week) being made if they plan on 18M consoles this year. Cranking out production over 1.2M a month or so is a lot bigger investment than you're thinking.

The problem with 3DS being overproduced though is when they made the initial stock they paid top dollar premium on hardware, and priced 3DS at a premium to match. As the price of the parts decreased over time, they couldn't realize the savings (and had to lose money reflecting those savings to consumers that expected them) because they'd already paid a higher price on the parts. Switch's parts will get cheaper over the year. The ones they're producing this week probably cost less to make in total parts than the ones they made last October for launch day. If they'd overproduced, they'd have paid last October's prices on their parts inventory.

Plus what's the smallest production block/time they could buy? Would they have to commit to at least 50% more or 100% more? Foxconn has everyone in the electronics industry over a barrel...they determine who makes what, when, and how much of it as pretty much the only major manufacturer (much bigger than their nearest competitor. Samsung and LG produce their own hardware though.

I agree that while low inventory hype can help a product it only helps so much before it becomes a problem. But we don't know where the bottlenecks are and it's extremely possible Nintendo isn't underordering, but instead can only secure X amount of parts guarantees and keep it timed with their production contracts. These are the pitfalls of not actually running your own fabrication plants, but even then, your factory is only as good as your ability to get parts from suppliers. Such is the price of instead of using "withered technology" running at the bleeding edge of tech by entering the mobile space. You're in competition amidst strong demand for parts that are in short supply.

@iMarkU Outside of Japan, you have a point. However, this is Japan, after all. Of course they were going to see an enormous surge of interest in the next big Nintendo portable console which will inevitably have all of the big Japanese properties on it. It would be short sighted to think there wouldn't be more demand in Japan than anywhere else.

I'd also be interested to know exactly which parts Nintendo is competing with Apple for, because they're certainly not competing over the most important part of the NS, the system on chip Tegra...

@Bunkerneath It's actually a widely known fact that most tech companies are having difficulties getting the raw materials they need to keep up with production. The same gears that Nintendo uses in the Joy-Con are used in smartphones. And frankly Apple and Samsung have a higher buying power than Nintendo does, so priority for parts goes to them and Nintendo gets the scraps. It's not Nintendo's fault. So your comment was rather trollish & completely ignorant.

@NEStalgia Which parts are Nintendo competing with Apple for, though? I don't think I've seen anyone clarify exactly what those parts are. They're certainly not competing over the most important part of the NS, the Tegra SoC, and obviously Nintendo isn't using Retina displays.

I'd also be interested to know what the momentum is like in Japan. I suspect it's red light, green light, just like in the USA, except with more intense red lights. So even if they're producing 25k a week at a breakneck pace, they're not necessarily making them available every week fresh off the production line. They probably release them in groups of 100k+ or more, which should allow time for reallocation.

The 18-20M figure by the first anniversary of the NS doesn't line up with the 1M consoles per month goal, either. They literally don't seem to be capable of reaching that marker if they're already struggling this much. They can't magically increase production beyond what it already is if it's strained by supply of parts. (Of which, again, what are those parts?) If they do produce and sell 1M per month, it's still going to be around 10-12M consoles sold in the first year at most. What exactly is the spread of those sales anyways, if the region with the most demand only has 100k per month allocated? That seems like a tiny number historically for Japan, when I think about it. Can that really be right?

@PlywoodStick The NAND memory, the parts that make HD Rumble possible, and I believe the screen though I'm not sure on that last one.

Wow, just... wow. I'm still shocked that they're still having issues getting them out there. The projections for Switch after one year are looking large. C'mon fence sitting, non-AAA offering, 3rd parties, get on the train.

I think the odds of Nintendo actually producing and shipping anything close to 18 million in FY 2017 are very long indeed. Their earlier estimate of 7 million is probably much more accurate. 10 million seems like a stretch at this point.

Did Nintendo not know Apple and Samsung would be making things? Apple puts out a new iPhone almost every year. Did Foxconn not properly advise Nintendo?

Producing more Switches isn't a huge financial risk to Nintendo. They have no choice. The Wii U is dead and the 3DS is on advanced life support. Switch and mobile are the future. They've already spent oodles of cash on Super Bowl ads, commercials, reveal events, and celebrity endorsements. Now they have all this demand they aren't even close to fulfilling. What's more damaging? Frustrating potential buyers (and possibly driving them elsewhere) or producing 3-5 million extra Switches for the launch window that are most likely sold?

@PlywoodStick
Well you can't blame them after the 3DS and the Wii U can you? Besides you have to divide your resources between the US, Europa and Japan. How many are you going to divide over these 3, and who gets the most? Ofcourse you could favor your own country over the others, but thats not how it works.

Also the competition with Apple is apparently over the flash memory.

@NEStalgia I can't speak for the US, I said I lived in Canada so I base the experience on that. You have the direct channel and the distributor Channel. Direct channel will usually go to the bigger box stores (BB, Walmart, etc) while the distributor channel (which gets its from the Direct Channel) will send it to whatever business is affiliated with them (mostly the independents). So I got mine at a Microplay which a competitor to Ebgames in Quebec only so its not a huge company but they are direct and get a constant flow fo Switch every week. Like I said, I called them at first, they said call Monday or Tuesday. Called Tuesday, they got them, reserved one, picked it up the next day and they had a dozen there. Its the cycle they do every week. I saw a few independent video stores that are not direct get them as well. I even came across one unit at a Shoppers Drug Mart. I actually saw a couple at Walmart too locally but I think that was a fluke lol. In any case, they are there. I had very little effort to do to get one. That said, I guess it depends where you are in the world. Fact, Canada has a lot less population than the US

@PlywoodStick They vowed to increase production but they didn't say WHEN the additional prod lines will become operational. If the saw the response to switch and put an order in for opening new lines, those lines might be under contract until September, or some such and they get them when they're available after a month of retooling for Switch production, but maybe it's 4x more lines to round out the second half of the year.

Parts are for NAND and rumble mostly. Some other parts like Tegra might not be facing competition but they can only buy as many as nVidia has their own lines set up to produce....and lets safely assume X1 didn't have a lot of manufacturing lines pre-Switch, so they're ALSO having to tool up to meet capacity. That would be a pleasant bottlenck for NV. Frustrating for Nintendo.

You also have to assume they're hoarding some of their current output to stockpile for Christmas sales, Splatoon launch in Japan, etc. I think 25k is the Japan allotment....250k is probably more likely per week...that would give you your 1M total, but if they're stockpiling a portion of that for key release events, less ends up on the street. If the new lines aren't up and running yet (which is doubtful, it's too soon after announcement to actually get new production operational) they're just chasing their tails until the new output relieves some pressure.

@kuliddar Haha, I envy you when I hear the low population. I stop envying you when I see the Winter temperatures up there!

Interesting, though. I'd assumed NoA used the same policies in the US and CA, but I wonder if they do have some different channels in CA. There hasn't been much distribution channel activity here.

Although, the trouble here is also that the independents are virtually non-existant. The big stores have utterly crushed and decimated independent and regional stores (most of that owed to Walmart over decades, and more recently Amazon) Most of the independents are online instead of brick and mortar at this point. But for something like Switch, that becomes an even harder proposition to keep in stock than the big companies!

The smart strategy of supply and demand is working really well with the Switch. Even if the whole Apple/Nintendo story is true, Nintendo would still be pushing this strategy regardless.

Besides my undesired thoughts about Nintendo's online service strategy (which I have no interest buying into), the Switch is my new favorite console next to the SNES and GC.

I hope Nintendo see the people in those queues as big fat Yen symbols that aren't in their coffers, and do their very best to change that.

I sorta feel bad for Nintendo right now. They have people lined up to buy their product but component shortages are going to really slow down production.

This is the market that Capcom refuses to support...

@GravyThief That's why Iwata was different. He saw customers as big fat walking bananas.

@PlywoodStick Walking bananas that love waggling things

@NEStalgia I'm starting to rely on you too much, but thank you for answering my haphazard questions! Yeah, they definitely need a few million in stock for the holidays. Even that might not be enough. Maybe in subsequent years there might be some risk to do that, but this year they need all they can get.

Now that I look it up, it sounds like Nintendo is getting at least this first model's NAND flash from Toshiba. Which is always in demand, due to Toshiba's good reputation for reliable drives and memory. So that definitely explains the limited stock. I knew Apple was investing in adaptive accelerometers and gyroscopes, but I didn't know they're drawing from the same stock the JoyCons use.

It's funny how different tech companies have different production hindrances. SK Hynix can't produce enough HBM2 memory, and Toshiba can't produce enough NAND flash memory. But at least unlike Vega, no one is asking "Where are the Switches?" Everyone knows where the Switches are. They're in our hearts and minds. Vega is somewhere out in the cosmos.

@IceClimbers Thank you for answering! I've read the NAND flash is made by Toshiba, which explains it's scarcity, due to their good reputation. I didn't know that Apple was using similar or same parts for their own accelerometers and gyroscopes as the JoyCons. The effect is definitely different, though...

@NEStalgia What about wiggling and waggling bananas?

@iMarkU In hindsight, yeah, it seems scary to make a bold move. Yet it turned out that Nintendo could have sold probably twice as many consoles by now if the stock existed for it. BotW exceeded expectations, and I can't help but feel the NS will be the second coming of the PS2 for the Japanese. Europe doesn't seem to have nearly the level of demand for Nintendo that NA and JP do, which is historically true as well.

You have a point, and Nintendo can't divine the future through an electronic oracle. However, I could have seen the logic in favoring their home country a bit more this time around. Outside of indies and smaller third parties, big western third parties aren't typically doing right by them these days.

@PlywoodStick Hard to account for Europe's poor taste in gaming...... Well France and Italy seem to have good taste....but the rest of Europe always has such dismal sales for Nintendo and high sales for such dismal games

I think SK Hynix should first start working on reliable modules before worrying about HBM2 output

It's still really bad in the U.S. too, I think. I am lucky to have found mine late March when visiting my grandparents in upstate New York.

Come to Australia. I can walk into Big W, EB Games, JB Hifi and Target right now and pick one up. I don't because I already have one but still there is stock here which could do so much better elsewhere. Funny that isn't it.

@NEStalgia The best part is that the professional version of Vega is launching at the end of June, then the enthusiast consumer models in late July, then mainstream models early next year... So the people who would actually need better reliability from the features of HBM2 instead of GDDR5x are going to bear the brunt of the teething issues...

@Bunkerneath wrong. New hardware and chips don't fall from trees. It is hard to make these things. Yields are low at the start of new hardware production. And they have to not say over produce, product on hand costs money, and too much stock in stores looks bad. They have already said they are in reading production runs.

Wow. This time next year console war is going to be Nin vs Sony

I thinks its worth pointing out that this is not the situation all over Japan, just the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka. I live in Tsukuba and was able to reserve a switch yesterday without any problems at all, no lotteries or anything like that, when the store gets a delivery they'll put one by and call me.

Also chances are that some of those people in line are just scalpers and yakuza, there was a similar problem with Playstation VR (which has been sold out since constantly since launch) where there were homeless people being paid by yakuza to line up to get tickets for the lottery.

Production is a messy affair. Too few, and you get this, too much and you get another Wii U.
I can't blame Nintendo, who though the Switch would be such a hit? I bet everyone though they would jump in December, not right off the bat in March.

Still can't find them anywhere here.

Have yet to see one on a shelf anywhere.
Same old Nintendo.
Ridiculous.