Over the weekend, GameStop announced in a press release that its first shipment of the Nintendo Switch sold out, completely.
Of course, this news may come as a surprise to both those writing it and others who have spent the large part of the weekend hating on Nintendo's new console. The Nintendo Switch has been an easy target for harsh criticism, a lot of which is warranted (its disappointing $299 price, its dearth of compelling launch titles, etcetera).
Just look at the front page of N4G.com on Friday night, the day after the Nintendo Switch was revealed:
To those behind these stories, and to those quick to proclaim the death of the Nintendo Switch before it even began its life, the idea of the console selling out of pre-orders in any capacity would have seemed like a pipe dream. On the flip side, Nintendo faithfuls who couldn't wait to get their hands on the Switch will see this news as vindication.
Before jumping to conclusions, though, there are a few factors that need be considered, namely the Wii and the Wii U, both of which were reported to have very successful pre-launch sales. The Wii U Deluxe Edition (that came bundled with a game) also sold out in advance of the launch, but that later translated into 320,000 sales after around two months (for context, the original Wii console sold more than 600,000 consoles in the first eight days after launch).
It's also important to note that GameStop also didn't reveal how many Nintendo Switch consoles made up their "first allocation," as the press release put it. Was it one million? One thousand? Three? We don't really know. GameStop did reveal that the first allocation for the Wii U was less than 500,000, so this could be an issue of Nintendo not shipping enough consoles to fill an albeit modest demand.
Although, Nintendo big wigs have stated publicly that 2 million units shipped worldwide, but that is presumably across all retailers, so there's no way to know what share of that GameStop took in. So all we know is that GameStop sold out of anywhere between 1 (a singular console) and 2 million Nintendo Switch consoles.
And even though the Wii did have a much more successful run than the Wii U, it was still a console that had a very niche appeal and was held back by its hardware, leading to its comparatively short run. These pre-launch stats can be misleading, and neither the Nintendo fan boys nor the Switch haters can draw any concrete conclusions from GameStop's numbers, mostly because they aren't numbers.
While this may very well mean vindication for the Nintendo Switch, a sure sign that all the nitpicking on the console's various features or lackthereof was all for naught, the Nintendo Switch won't be out of the woods until we get some solid sales figures.
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