Switch Estimated To Have Sold More Than 50,000 Units On Launch Day In China

@JRJalapeno have you ever been to china?

I have, was there 2 years ago.i was surprised to see it, but It’s becoming a very very rich country. Very large differences between rich and poor and very large differences between people living in the cities or not. But i think the upper half of the population can afford electronics. That’s a lot of potential customers for the switch!

I honestly and earnestly hope that china crash and burn as country. Usurpers and invaders.

@JRJalapeno Actually only 3.3% of Chinese people lived below the national poverty line in 2018, whereas 15% percent of people in the UK and 15.1% of people in the US lived below.

But then again, this is judged based on how the country itself defines its poverty and I don't know if China is stricter with its definition or not.

Not sure you can trust any numbers coming out of China

@JRJalapeno Okay, so China defines poverty as people making less than 2,300 yuan per year (326 dollars or 247 pounds sterling). Due to the industrial increase in China, more and more people are making it above this threshold, with virtually everyone being above the line by the end of 2020. However, economic disparity has increased over time, meaning while they are not technically considered poor, they have a far lower standard of living than those above them. To combat these issues, the Chinese government is trying to get the rural poor to move to urban areas.

Honestly, i hope the switch don't sell many units in China. If it becomes a success, then we can start seeing how developers will auto censor their own games in order to make it to che Chinese market and to please Chinese government. Just like Hollywood does. or even Valve, where some Taiwanese games are not available on Steam anymore after Chinese users backlash following political differences.

I'm surprised that both Joy-Con weren't red.

Or they could have shipped it with one red and one yellow.

@AnnoyingFrenzy Yes, just that. They have a lower percentage of people in poverty because theyve redefined what poverty means. Thats not a positive thing. Granted, the relatively wealthy people in the cities still make up tens of millions. Thats a big market, but Ive always assumed that a lot of Chinese people who want a switch and can afford one have already bought one. Tencent's involvement simply gives it a more mainstream presense, showing the appeal of a gaming console to a populace that still prefers crappy phone games.

India also has a huge population, maybe Nintendo will enter that market one day.

The sinophobia really jumped out in the comment section lmao

@Don pokemon sword and shield has curry and rice!

Perhaps that’s a hidden message that India will be next?

@MossBossRoss From your tone, it sounds like you are accusing me saying positive things about China, so I would like to take this moment to address the entire comment section and say that I think China's government is one of the worst and has many deplorable practices. I was merely analyzing economic data due to the og commentor's surprise.

@RGnsd well, to be honest, I have a friend who’s married to a Chinese woman (hence my long-stay visit to China a few years back), but the stuff she says sometimes is very scary, indoctrinated really. They’ve lived there for a few years, snd my friend says it’s like living in a pike of ants, where only the tribe (party) matters. Everything that gets in the way just gets quietly and quickly removed. If you don’t express a negative position on the party your life will be just fine or even very good.

A neighbour of them criticed the party en public on the Chinese version of twitter. He didn’t come back home a month later. He was away for a week and when he got home he had bruices and a broken hand. Things you would think would mainly happen in movies. That’s when they decided to move, and now they’re living here in the Netherlands.

In 10 years time that country will be very much like the opening sequence of Half-Life 2

@JRJalapeno little re-education they are having more disposable income compared to the rest of the WORLD. They got over 1+ Bil population and with the Market Force buying. I doubt that is the case here. All countries are trying to get their Middle to Upper class Students to come and spend money in their Country that is a FACT or already buying from China cause the want cheap and aren't willing to pay their own Workers to do more. There is alot of teasing that needs to be done here before anyone should be thinking they are a Online China economics professor.

@Don "India also has a huge population, maybe Nintendo will enter that market one day."

Huge Populations doesn't equate to buying power only China has the monopoly here. India has alot of "Caste" class so until they fix that - don't think India will come around anytime soon.

@AnnoyingFrenzy "To combat these issues, the Chinese government is trying to get the rural poor to move to urban areas."

Problem here is whom is going to feed those people and do the Farm work. That's how disasters is made by human hands. All this talk is more or less going into Politico route at this rate.

That seems like an impressive number. Apparently even Tencent and Nintendo are impressed by the pre-ordered and potential sales figures. Awesome. Such is the Power of Nintendo!

And wow. Lots of Political Justice Warriors in this comment section. It's both funny and sad how some people are instantly triggered when they see anything related to China.

What's next, people discussing religion in Doom Eternal article? Or talking about the validity of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution in a Pokémon/Digimon article? Commentators demanding for Chun Li to be banned from the next Street Fighter game because she's Chinese? Jeez.

@SwitchForce I agree it sounds sketchy at best. I didn't read a lot into the minutia of the plan there, but it doesn't sound like the government did either.

@Friendly That’s certainly an important perspective, and a reality of living in a country that punishes those who speak ill of the government. Ultimately though China is just a capitalist country with strong central government planning. In some ways it pays off because they avoid a lot of the economic up and downs that constantly impact countries with far too powerful and wasteful private industries. Not all economic recessions mind you, but a lot nonetheless. There are both pros and cons in what the CCP has done. China is the fastest growing and upwardly mobile country probably in the history of civilization. While wages have stagnated in many developed countries, China’s are on the rise and the standard of living has improved dramatically. That can’t be ignored, but neither can many of the unnecessary sacrifices made in the process.

So it’s a complex situation.

@diwdiws SAYS
"I honestly and earnestly hope that china crash and burn as country. Usurpers and invaders."

To mix politics with the wish of people like you and me to crash and burn as a country is criminal and unfortunate. Avoid at all costs similar people with similar thinking! They are dangerous!

Whoop! China will run the planet one day so moan all you want but it will happen. Had a look at box office figures recently? A popular Chinese film can make the top 10 yearly, worldwide box office based SOLELY on a great performance in China. Currently only America can challenge it, and that's something that won't be the case for much longer.

@Lordplops well when Americans no longer buy all of their stuff, their economy will collapse.

@AnnoyingFrenzy sad thing is people cannot difference between an objective analysis and preferences or opinions for a topic. There are bad and good things happening in China, one cannot outrule one thing to justify the other one.

@Trajan That cannot happen, both economies would crush down since both economies are kinda inflated, Chinese by heavily exporting and the American by heavily consuming. If the Americans stop consuming chaos would break out in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston and Los Angeles. Those cities would go bankrupt within days or even hours. In China cities like Shenzhen, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hongkong or Chengdu will follow the American ones after a little delay and both countries' economy would cease to exist. The world will follow...

That's great, hopefully they now had the pleasure to experience great games they missed throughout the 3 decades of gaming with such awesome titles like Ultra Street Fighter II, Final Fantasy X, Doom 3, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and many more.

@AnnoyingFrenzy It was the government that sent the poor to live in the rural places to begin with to segment the cities as places for the "most productive." And as with everywhere else, the cities have a far higher cost of living. No doubt tomorrow, there will, in fact, be no poor at all. Change poverty to be anyone making less than 5 yuan, and suddenly nobody is poor anymore, proving how advanced the country is compared to its peers!

@Friendly It's already worse than the opening of HL2. HL2 was based on Eastern Europe during the 20th century Cold War. What modern authoritarian governments have is technology. So they can have even tighter, more personal monitoring and control of society without even having the need for masked soldiers and checkpoints with visible credentials verification. The best system of total control is one that looks like freedom on the exterior and everybody knows they're always being watched from anywhere, always. Only the internet can deliver on that promise!

@NotTelevision It's easy to have an upwardly mobile society (for the upper class) if you're willing to "dispose" of the dead weight. Imagine if the US could disappear most of it's foodstamp/welfare/pension population, re-appropriate entire population centers for more efficient use, and banish all but the best performing students to menial labor before they even get out of high school so we could stop spending on them and only offer education to those with the most latent talent, vastly shrinking education spending, while exploiting that huge disposed population to undercut the world's labor rates for decades all while manipulating our exchange rates so it's always favorable?

That said, the US is very rapidly becoming a clone of China, in part due to the fact that through purchase and investment they own a substantial part of our industry, and through that have substantial control of our government and have thus been setting us on a similar course and similarly tremendous income/living standard disparity (which was in part due to the greed of our own business/government leadership over decades.) And in part due to trying to compete against them and the very accurate Hitler quote of "The greatest strength of the totalitarian state is that those who fear it must imitate it." - We use their own methods more and more and more, the more we try to rival and compete against them in any area, to the point that there's no point in winning, we become them anyway by trying.

It's never fair to evaluate a country that is effectively two societies. That includes the US at this point, which is more similar to China than different now, though we're following their example (and command in many ways.) Sure they can show you the good points of their newfound upwardly mobile high quality modern successful civilization. The problem is that quality civilization you see was built by cherry picking which people stay and which people are forced out. At that point, it's not a society as much as a eugenics project, where the rejects are more valuable serving as production equipment than being simply wholesale liquidated like the old days.

considering the country has over 1 billion people, that's not that much lol

@MisterDevil It could be a gradual thing. If the electronics sector moves back to Japan and Americans stop buying cheap items I think we would be fine.

Something needs to be done, that's for sure.

1. Become a hit in China
2. Gives a reason to release Gujian 3 on Switch
3. Finally make an English translation and release in the West.

Happy outcome to China release

@NEStalgia I’d say the wages and standard of the living has gone up in China across the board. Mainly due to amount of people, as was mentioned before, moving from rural to urban areas and becoming part of the “white collar” work force. The jobs in area/fields like accounting, engineering, and computer programming/ IT have risen astronomically in the last 10-15 years. Students also have a high level of proficiency in the maths and sciences, since they are forced to study it so rigorously in school.

Now if someone were to ask me “Has the CCP engineered an ideal society” I’d certainly say no. I’m just pointing out some of the things people overlook in the discussion of China being “evil”. Capitalism as a mode of economic organization, is inherently destructive and wasteful though. You can’t totally blame a country like China, historically poverty stricken and used by foreign imperialist, in wanting to have their own leverage. You need leverage and capital if you are going to have any sort of autonomy, with the way the international market works. America wouldn’t go to war with China, but they’d definitely put them in a stranglehold extracting resources and corporate dominance. It’s sad to say that certainly because you’d hope we as a collective human population would be over that sort of power hungry interventionism, but as the 20th and now 21st century prove it is just as prevalent as in previous eras of history.

I change my comment. The sinophobia and ignorance really jumped out in the comment section. Some people either never heard of Quora or only watch CNN/FOX lol.

Amazing news. China: proving again it is the premier country, leading the way and a wonderful utopia!

@Ghost-Piece well said. I have reservations about Nintendo giving the green light for China until they clean up their act. Partnering with Tencent (just another branch of the Chinese government) to make a heavily censored console is not a good look to the free world. I guess the potential money was too much to ignore.

@SmileMan64 China is a genocidal country that commits war crimes against their own people. They strap them down, no anesthesia, cut out their organs and scoop out their eyeballs as the victims are left to die a horrendous, gruesome death. All this goes to a ridiculous, quickly distributed organ supply and to scientific research to benefit those who score high on the social credit system. Not to mention the Orwellian social credit system itself and invasive mass surveillance. Do you really think you are so much smarter than us because we care about the citizens?

China is evil, moreso than most realize. Be thankful you live in a decent country. You get to enjoy an uncensored Nintendo system and the extra bonus of living free- free enough to make a stupid comment online and continue living your life unhindered, as it should be.

@NEStalgia Incredibly well considered and well researched comment, I couldn't have worded it better myself. The CCP is inarguably today's Nazi Germany, and the regressive influence their policies are inflicting upon free societies who quietly envy their model of tyranny will be felt long after the Chinese government as we know it today is eradicated.

@JRJalapeno China is rising fast economically, and i wonder how the world will be when China becomes the richest country on the planet which they will be 100% for sure.

@CarpeDiem "China will be a changed place one day soon. People are rising up." It's much too late trying to change China from within. That would inevitably lead to a full-blown civil war.

Enough politics going on in the UK today as it is, so to get off topic and get back to the sales part of this post; well done Nintendo, if nothing else that's another fifty thousand units out there for people to enjoy, and to keep adding to your sales figures.

Good for Chinese customers to get official Nintendo stuff now! The sales would be much higher if they released it there from the start because the people who really wanted a switch got one long ago from Taobao, JD or Tmall anyway.
I also don't think that games will be censored in general to fit China's law. They can easily make a veraion for the CN market and that's it. Just like Wolfenstein was changed in Germany due to the law that no official Nazi Symbol is allowed in Games (which was changed some time ago).

Man, I can clearly tell that most people have never been to China or know many Chinese people. Quora is a great place to start like @RGnsd suggested but I bet most people haven't even Google a picture of modern Shanghai online.

Can't afford the goods?
Anti-Western totalitarian government? Yeah, that's why they adopted a WESTERN FORM OF GOVERNMENT.
Monitoring of citizens (and the world)? By whom exactly since apparently we're all victims of this all powerful invisible government here.
Organ harvesting with 0 proof?

There's freedom of speech then there's speaking without thinking.

Is that why China is the only place on Earth where over 56 ethnic groups (speaking over 60 languages) of Jews, Muslims and Christians, Buddhist and atheist can live in relative peace and massive numbers and actually prosper?

Is that why everything is Made in India, Mexico and Brazil because of cheap labour and numbers because we all know businesses love that. (Try to understand an ounces of engineering before saying this.)

Oh and clearly every Chinese guy is in on it, right?
Even HKers like me...
How else can a growing "corrupted" government (two important contradictory words) of 80 million+ CCP members, monitors, suppress and undermine 1.4 billion people let alone the entire world?

You know even with 15 arms, ten eyes and time travel technology they stole from aliens, these 80 million CCP members are still clearly being overworked! How dare they!

And don't forget organ harvesting from testimonials of "dying" people. Because the first thing I would do if I have my organ harvested would be to fly 12 hours to a foreign country, contact the newspapers there then provide an elaborate story with no prove about how my organs have been harvested by the CCP and sold. You know, clearly, its like X-Ray scans and common sense have never been invented or something?

Oh and before this Wu Mao spits more China-zi propaganda, because he is clearly brainwashed and stupid, lets remind him of how his government ran over his own people with "tanks" because we saw an image on the net of Tank Man, an inspiration to "democracy" and freedom to tell bs based on memes and imagery, not facts. (No wonder the Chinese government censor images...like they censor racism & hate speech online towards black people or other similar crimes but hey, Great Firewall = no.)

Seriously, the among of ignorance coming from this thread really tells me why the western world is destine for greatness. Who needs to know about the rest of the world when being first at everything automatically makes us superior?

You know, we invented computers and nuclear bombs first so we must be all smart and cultured and China trying to have their own footing is clearly a sign they are a threat...even though we're still superior though. You know, inferior threats aren't an oxymoron and we aren't bullying at all.

Technology should be kept in the hands of the elite and those who can afford it (with pieces of printed paper called money, something that actually holds little real value and was invented in Ancient China) like us for the betterment of mankind even though all these competitive innovations being made by Chin Cong Company is just stolen technology.

We continue to insult the great American corporations that push our industry and tech prowess forward for doing something smart like moving factories to China where there is hardworking well-trained staff that don't ask for billions to do layman's work...

…because freedom of speech.

Or maybe because Chinese staff is easy to bribe with 50c? That must be it.

And again, we invented it first so we must know everything there is know about the subject. Being the frontier and pioneers automatically makes us leaders in every aspect. Everyone else are just jealous thieves.

That's why western medicine and science can't explain Traditional Chinese Medicine like acupuncture that's been around and verified for thousand of years because...

Unscientific voodoo....

Despite this, we still pull out teeth when you have toothache or bombard diseases (like cancer) with antibiotics and chemotherapy.

Not very barbaric at all.

Oh and believe there is a God which we'll spend countless rational hours debunking atheists about because there is nothing more rational then telling someone who doesn't care to worship a long dead "human" entity.

And this go back full circle to democracy

Which is about a "vote" by your average unknowing citizen between one "idiotic" representative to the next instead of an actual constantly changing system that has exams, demonstrated acts of excellence, actual practical work and still have voting for those that actually involved in the process... not just everyday folk who don't care.

I wonder why businesses and Churches don't use it more?

Oh wait. THEY DO.

If only Nintendo would allow every citizen on earth to vote for whether they should make the Switch or not. Clearly some gamers are wrong and PlayStation and Xbox are right...we just want a powerful box connected to our TV, sales PROOF this. Or a Nintendo phone. Lots and lots of Nintendo phones...

Meanwhile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shBwf97O7zk

The Chinese are only getting it now😯?

@Trajan Japan is a 'dying' nation right now with the decay of population and workforce, the economy didn't grow or barely grew in the last 2 or 3 decades, it is hardly imagineable that they will all move back to Japan. It could work out in a way with the US but stuffs would get a lot more expensive so... I doubt it will happen except some luxury brands or entreprises with overly loyal customers.

@MisterDevil But what happened to $300 PS2s and $200 gamecubes?