Japanese Charts: Nintendo Switch Sales Plummet As Shipments Get Put On Hold

I’m surprised FF7 sold under a million. I thought it would have done first party Nintendo numbers. ACNH looking on track to be biggest switch title in the next few weeks. Didn’t think that was going to happen either.

@Andy_Witmyer that’s a myth that’s been debunked over and over

Sad to see FF7 perform so poorly. Was expecting a lot more from Sonys biggest game. Also, what happened to RE3, that's horriable numbers.

Come on Animal Crossing, you can do it. Beat Pokemon.

@meeto_1 Not really. New estimates show that the mortality rate for covid19 is far less than what was initially reported, by several orders of magnitude.

Doomed I tell you. DOOMED I SAY!

@Andy_Witmyer You do know more died from covid-19 this year than did the flu. And the mortality rate is WAY higher than the flu.

And remember, that's with us shutting down the economy and doing social distancing.

@Andy_Witmyer You're part of the problem.

@mesome713 And? It hasn't been by much. Projected mortality rates in the US for covid19 went from an estimated 300-500k a couple months back to 60,000. Just for reference...62,000 Americans died of the annual flu in 2018.

@Andy_Witmyer That's cause we shut down the economy and practiced social distancing. The mortality rate is still WAY higher than your normal flu.

@LUIGITORNADO how exactly am I part of the problem? I've practiced social distancing and wear masks. That doesn't mean that I don't think that sending the world spiraling into a global depression via fascistic lockdowns is a great idea.

@Andy_Witmyer I hope you become the donald's new health advisor. 😂

@Andy_Witmyer Also it wasn't 60k Americans. It was 60k around the whole world.

@mesome713 actually, those initial numbers took social distancing into consideration. They were revised down because it's clearly not as deadly as was initially believed. Most people are asymptomatic. The vast majority of deaths have occurred among those with compromised immune systems and lung problems. To quarantine all of society over it is absurd. But that's just my opinion.

I just hate seeing its economically catastrophic effects on all business - from local shops on main street all the way up to Nintendo.

@RileyR I wish!

@Andy_Witmyer That's why the numbers are so low, yet even with all we did, it still killed WAY more and at a higher rate than the flu.

@Andy_Witmyer sure would be interesting to see a completely different approach, at the very least I'll give you that.

The numbers are low in part because of social distancing, but they're also low because it's literally been observed that most people who've contracted covid have no symptoms. We're not talking about something like Ebola, which essentially a death sentence.

And, yes, at least 60,000 Americans died of the flu in the US in 2018. Some estimates put the number as high as 80,000.

Don't misunderstand - I'm not trying to downplay the loss of human life. These people who've died aren't just numbers, they were people with family and friends whom they will never again. It's awful and truly sad.

However, I don't think it's wrong to ask the question of whether or not a second great depression would be, in the long term, worse than the virus itself - because if things aren't soon corrected, that is what's going to happen. People might not get covid, but they might also not have a job, or a house, or a car. How is that not sad?

@RileyR Same. Definitely. I think there should be efforts to help keep the virus spreading to the elderly and others who are high risk - but to keep just about everyone at home and not working for over a month is, imho, absurd. Not to mention financially destructive to the extreme. In some states, there have been almost no cases and yet every "non essential" shop is shuttered.

Nintendo might have a big enough war chest to stave off the ongoing economic disruption - for a time - but many small businesses aren't gonna get through this. It is extremely sad to see.

I have friends and loves ones who have watched their entire retirement go up in smoke because of it. Is their plight not worthy of sympathy? What are we going to do for them? What happens when suicide rates begin to skyrocket?

@Andy_Witmyer this is the perfect example of the old saying of the nail that stands out gets hit with the hammer. People need to believe that hiding in their houses and staying 6 feet away from someone will keep them safe. Even when a virus is airborne and a cough can travel several meters further than that. Plus they apparently have endless supplies of food and no rent.

@Andy_Witmyer Yay for killing the world economy for something that is barely worse than the annual flu.

If I could downvote more than once I would. People like you have been part of the problem from the beginning. Downplaying this virus so people don't take it seriously may have costed more than a few lives. Just stop and ride this thing out. Your precious Nintendo sales numbers will go back up when this is over.

@mesome713
"Also it wasn't 60k Americans. It was 60k around the whole world."

No, it wasn't. It was around half a million worldwide.

@Trickbaby14 Right? Social distancing has become mandatory in most states and yet all of them allow people to go to the grocery store, or McDonalds, and convenience stores, as if those places are somehow safe because...reasons. But god forbid you want to grab your Switch go to a secluded beach by yourself. You might get arrested and served a fine!

Those are great numbers for the FF7 remake... or so I thought? Seems others are disappointed, I thought it was very impressive.

@mesome Look at the CDC numbers for influenza mortality rates in the US 2017-2018. The lowball estimate was 61,000. I'm not pulling numbers out of thin air 😂

If Animal Crossing can sell 293,000 copies during the week of the worst Switch shortage yet, then the game will have some ridiculously strong legs once Switch supply is available.

Switch supply should recover this week as Nintendo ships more units, but demand will still far exceed supply.

@Andy_Witmyer Right? Social distancing has become mandatory in most states and yet all of them allow people to go to the grocery store

People need food or would your prefer looting? McDonalds is Drive thru and pickup only, no one is hanging out in the dining room.

but god forbid you want to go to a secluded beach by yourself. You might get arrested and served a fine. Yeah, that's stupid.

@Crono1973 You can go inside of McDonalds, you just can't sit down and eat. My car has a window that won't roll down so if I want that tasty double cheeseburger, I have to make the trek inside.

I know that people have to get food and whatnot, I'm just saying that it's funny how people keep pushing for social distancing and yet see nothing inherently weird about dozens of people gathering in a store for food.

@westman98 I think longterm, Animal Crossing might be Nintendo's biggest selling game of all time, or at least in Japan. Maybe it already is, not sure.

@Andy_Witmyer
Okay, I don't know why you replied to me, since I basically backed you. 🤔

@MrBlacky I meant to reply to mesome, sorry. Corrected!

Not sure why so many people are surprised that FF7 didn't sell a million on launch weekend, only one game on PS4 has done that so far in Japan, Monster Hunter World.

DQ11 got very close to breaking a million on launch weekend, like its 3DS counterpart, at 950,000 units sold.

@Andy_Witmyer
Oh, I see. 👍

@Andy_Witmyer
It definitely wont be Nintendo's biggest game ever anywhere. Mario Kart Wii is a 37 million seller globally, and Pokemon Red/Green/Blue is a 10 million seller in Japan alone

With that being said, Animal Crossing will become one of the Top 5 best-selling games ever in Japan within the next few months.

@Crono1973 Downvote it all you want, whatever makes you feel better! Nintendo sales aren't my primary concern. They have the money to weather this. But a longterm continuation of the economic lockdown will destroy untold thousands of businesses, and ruin millions of lives. If you think that mass bankruptcies and the death spiral of global stock markets are not going to cause horrible or even deadly consequences, then you're fooling yourself.

@westman98 Didn't it pass Mario Kart 8 Delux recently? Maybe I thought MK8 sold much more than it actually did.

@MrBlacky https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/qa/how-many-people-die-from-the-flu-each-year-and-how-is-it-prevented

Estimates around 56k die from flu around world each year.

@MrBlacky I see now, 200-500k each year. Thanks.

@mesome713 shouldn't you be thanking me? 😂

@everyone, please use the Report function when people are obviously trolling and baiting or spreading annoying off-topic fake news or all of the above as “Andy” does

@Andy_Witmyer
In Japan, Animal crossing will comfortably become the best-selling Switch game and one of the Top 5 best-selling games ever.

Worldwide, Mario Kart 8 DX is sitting at 23+ million copies sold and is still selling incredibly well, so the chances that Animal Crossing outsells it is incredibly small.

The CDC's high estimate is 80,000 American deaths related to influenza through 2018. Check it out. It's an article by the associated press which had reported on the numbers and was subsequently posted to a statistics site:

https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/

@Andy_Witmyer I didn't get your reply, sorry, but thanks. But as you can see, had we not shutdown the economy and social distancing, the death toll would be insanly higher. That's why annual flu death rate is so low this year.

And the mortality rate of covid19 is WAY higher than the regular flu, that's why we had to take extra precautions.

@ferryb001 I'm not trolling or baiting. The world economy is absolutely relevant when discussing Nintendo and gaming in general. People aren't gonna be able afford to buy games if they don't have an income. Just because you might have a difference in opinion related to the ongoing covid panic, it doesn't mean that I'm trolling.

@Grot Money is never worth more than human life. NEVER.

@mesome713 fair enough - I guess we can civilly meet eachother in the middle with that.

@mesome713 People aren't saying that money is more important than human life - or at least I'm not. But, money is necessary to survival. A government can only magically print money out of thin air so much before there's a period of rapid hyperinflation. If people are gonna be out of work for another 3, 6, or 12 months, the cost will be staggering. Loaves of bread will cost like $20 a pop and people will go hungry. Many of them will suffer or even die - unfortunately, that is what usually happens in a massive depression.

@Andy_Witmyer Sure, but money can easily be replaced. Jobs can be replaced. Lives can't ever be replaced. People who have two shirts will give to the one without a shirt. We are a socialist society, well always prevail.

@Grot Yeah...no. Money can be replaced, lives cant.

@Andy_Witmyer I think it's been established many times already that it's not just a death toll numbers game here. Look at Italy's situation. Which flu in recent memory has caused a complete breakdown in their health system? Which flu has led to a shortage of ventilators because of the amount of people needing it at once? People are dying, not just because of the flu, but because of the amount of people needing treatment at the same time and our current global health system being unable to handle it. It sounds like you're completely unaffected by this, and you know no one personally that has been affected, which would explain your lack of empathy.

Money can be replaced, to a degree. But money becomes worthless when there is no working economy to back it up. Like I said, a government can continue to print currency but if there is no faith in it, then its value will eventually be reduced to that of Monopoly money. And if that happens, people will definitely go broke and homeless and starve. They certainly won't be buying any videogames.

Can we just take a moment to recognize the fact that Microsoft even has to report they sold 34 Xbox 1's in the whole region lol Not a fanboy of any company, I enjoy Microsoft's games on my PC and my One S is a hell of a 4k blu ray player but that's pretty funny right there

@kingn8link What makes you think I lack empathy? I've been nothing if not empathetic. My empathy extends not to just victims of the virus but to everyone who has been negatively affected by it. I will agree that the burden on the healthcare system is the main issue, but that might have been somewhat mitigated had the media not sensationalized the issue and, in the process, caused a mass global panic.

@HiggusDikkus I've never understood Japan's complete and utter rejection of Microsoft - it's been the same since day 1 of the original Xbox. I wonder what it is at the root of their complete lack of interest in their products. It can't just be because Microsoft is an American company. Lots of Japanese love American products. It's just fascinating how, for like 20 years now, sales of any Xbox have rarely ever been above 100 in any given week.

@Andy_Witmyer Japan doesn't really do TV consoles. And majority who buy games in Japan are kids. That's why Mature games don't sell too good in Japan. Also in Japan American products are known to be junk back in the day. Even though it's much better now, they don't really trust American products.

That's why Japan doesn't buy American cars or Trucks.

@Andy_Witmyer I’m not sure what to think when I see comments like this, no offense. It’s like you sorta see the health concerns, but you want the economy to remain stable throughout...

Social distancing and testing have proven to cause the number of cases to decrease. The mortality rate stands at about 5%, much higher than the flu. So it’s very important to limit the number of people who get it.

As for the economy well... yeah it sucks for everyone, but there are more important matters at hand. If anything the lesson to take away from this, is how fragile that economic fault line really is.

@Andy_Witmyer Your original comment was sarcastic and downplayed the impact of the virus. You implied that shutting things down was an over-reaction. You're disconnected from the issue itself, so it feels like a lack of empathy. Media sensationalism did not make this worse. It's not a lack of toilet paper that is causing people to die. It's not the amount of people getting doctor check-ups at the same time. It's the amount of people in the Intensive Care Unit with the virus that are unable to breathe on their own at the exact same time, and a shortage of ventilators, in addition to the risk for people with any underlying health issues and the elderly.

@electrolite77 😂 What a time for a comment like that. I wonder if that guy is pouring the asphalt on every road he drives on too.

@Andy_Witmyer If you think this situation wouldn't be worse if we weren't practicing social distancing then you are fooling yourself.

Okay, whatever happened in Japan i felt sorry to see Switch sales got down. 😞
Ganbatte, Japan !

@ferryb001 this is a terrible reaction.

You should thank your opponent for questioning the status quo, not try to shut him up like some chinese physician.

34 Xbox sold!

No Switch so let's buy Xbox, 34 people were really desperate to play video games at home.

This is a weird tangent I'm seeing.

@RileyR I was just pointing out that this person was turning a normal news story into a platform for false news, just shouting things like “a virus like the flu” might not be harmful to intelligent people like you and me. However sadly many people could start thinking this is a truth if they see it everywhere. False or unbacked information is one of the greatest dangers in this time, so please don’t be like China Or the US and just start repeating quotes without scientific backing like some of their puppet presidents do

@Andy_Witmyer We're just a little over a month in and we sit at 34,384 deaths from Covid-19 in the US. That's with 43 out of 50 states having some form of "Stay At Home" order in place plus social distancing. If you seriously think that the mortality rate is on level with the flu, you're just kidding yourself. We currently have 57,232 recovered cases and 34,384 deaths out of 673,215 total confirmed cases. If no one out of the remaining 581,599 died, we would still have a mortality rate of 5.9%. You people need to stop guessing at this stuff as it just makes you look foolish.

@mesome713 Huh? The flu kills an average of like 600,000 people every year. Covid has killed what, like just over 100,000 so far? Covid might end up having a higher death rate when all is said and done, but so far it definitely has not killed more people than flu.

@mesome713 Poverty kills an average of 18 million people every year. If you destroy the entire global economy, I guarantee you that there will be no replacing that money, and the poverty it causes will kill far more people than covid would even if you let it go unchecked. I’m not a coronavirus denier, but I think people need to be realistic about the potential outcomes of shuttering the economy long-term.

@meeto_1

Only 9 million PS4s in Japan. Those are fairly good numbers. They're slightly higher than FFXV. And you have to assume the digital numbers will be significantly higher due to the virus.

@BAN I was talking about this year. Covid19 has killed more than the flu this year. Shutting down the economy and social distancing brought the flu number way down.

And your poverty number isn't just a lack of money. It's greed that causes all them deaths. Money causes those deaths. Money is fake, it's highly regulated.

@Dezzy you are entirely right. As far as Sales as a percentage of total systems available it’s really good. The numbers themselves are really good. I just had it in my head, because of how much people have been pining for this remake and how well regarded the original is that it would sell crazy. But someone else here pointed out that only one game on the PS4 has sold over a mil in the first week. I didn’t know that. Makes you realise just how impressive Nintendo’s numbers are in Japan.

@meeto_1

Yes I think even DQ11 fell short of a million. This is one of the reasons I think they might consider a Switch port.

Can everyone please stop buying MK 8 Deluxe, so Nintendo will have a reason to make MK 9?

@mesome713 No, it hasn’t. Where are you even getting that from? Also, we don’t track flu by year, we track it by season. We’re currently in the 2019-2020 flu season. If we tracked it by year, then we’d have a LOT more flu deaths to tack on at the end of the year. Numbers for this season haven’t even been estimated yet because it’s still ongoing.

Oops, almost forgot to address your money claim. So yeah, when the economy around the world is in ashes and your family is starving, go to your local baker and tell him that money is fake and that if he doesn’t give you his bread it means he’s greedy. See how much free bread the guy bakes for you.

@BAN @Andy_Witmyer

400 New Yorkers died each month in 2018 from the flu or pneumonia. We just had 606 die in 24hrs of this bug - that was "good news" tonight because less than the 700 we had die each 24 hr the last 7 days.

So the Flu killed 4,700 (total) in all of NY State (2,000 in NYC) in 2018. We have lost 10,000 New Yorkers in less than 3 months. We have 4,400 on ventilators - and 80% of the people who get to that point are dying on us. We now started pumping people with nitric oxide to try and keep them off them

This is NOTHING like any flu season I have ever seen in my entire life living in NYC.

@Agramonte Literally no one is saying it’s the same as the flu. Everyone knows that it’s bad and that it’s different.

That said, that doesn’t change the facts that, A) The flu kills as many as 600K+ people every year; covid has killed 130k in the ~four months that we’ve known about it, yet people act like they didn’t know about communicable diseases until now. B) We don’t know what the actual death rate of covid will end up being because we’re not testing nearly enough people to make that estimate; we’re still mostly only testing people that become seriously ill/die, and we know that there are probably many, many more cases than are being diagnosed. And C) There’s a very serious conversation that needs to be had about which poison pill we want to swallow: the one that kills more people from covid or the one that results in literally millions of people dying from poverty. The fact that we’re only talking about this in terms of how overburdened hospitals are and how scared people in New York are is doing a grave injustice to the world at large.

@Andy_Witmyer you picked 2018, which is pretty much worse case scenario in last decade or so. Besides US will reach that number in next 2 - 3 months. The flu numbers are for the whole year. So to match that 60k, you have to have one of the worst cases of flu vs best case for the corona, in half of that time and you need to shut whole country down. Yeah, it’s much worse.

Kinda sad that there are still people in the "It's just a flu, bro!" crowd.

@westman98 Stupidity is a human quality. Unfortunately

@graysoncharles Never heard of him. But if he’s someone who likes to openly and honestly discuss important issues that affect billions of people by addressing all the facts and verifiable evidence relating to those things instead of choosing to reside in a delusional fantasyland wherein you just make up your own rules/reality and the entire fields of epidemiology and social science don’t exist, then I’ll take it as a compliment.

@Andy_Witmyer bUt ThE eCoNoMy!!!1!1!1!1 🤦🏼‍♂️

Am kind of lost for words after reading a lot of comments above but hope FF7 remake continues to sell well. Seems like it's off to a good start.

Geeze, I leave for a day and come back with dozens of fan mail in the comments section. I just don't have the time nore energy to address most of them - sorry! I guess I respond to the most recent one.

@Krzysztof And so what if 2018's flu numbers were an anomaly - they were really bad, on par with covid19 and yet we didn't shut down the world economies for the flu in 2018. Isn't it interesting how that works? We didn't shut the world economies down with the H1N1, yet a lot of people died from it. In my opinion, it is very fascinating. I guess what our leaders have found out in all of this is that people love being in bondage, and they really love having a government telling them exactly what to do, and how to live their lives. They must be quite overjoyed.

@BAN thank you for your intelligent and relevant counterpoints and rebuttals. I'm surprised that I was dogpile so hard for having a different view of the situation but then again, maybe I shouldn't have been.

Those who are accusing me of a lack of empathy have no idea who I am or what I feel. As such, it sounds like either projection or empty virtue signaling - or both. Though you think that I'm your enemy, I'm not your enemy.

Anyway, I hope AC sales pick up again soon!

@graysoncharles Ah. Well just based on that alone I’d say he’s a complete freaking idiot. How anyone in the year 2020 is dumb and/or uneducated enough to think that’s a legit possibility is beyond me. People have been burning/tearing 5G towers down over it. To say that I don’t agree with those people or those types of theories is an understatement.

@Andy_Witmyer Yeah well, unfortunately it seems that on the internet, virtue signaling and group-think rule most of the discourse.

But in real life discussions, it seems like most people are less convinced and more open to different perspectives on the subject. Because we know so little about the disease, and we have literally zero experience with shutting down the entire global economy and giving this much power to our governments, so if we’re being mature and honest, we should recognize that we can’t afford to jump to conclusions and finalize plans until we’ve covered all the bases. But that’s just my opinion.