You can find the shipments of the Switch per fiscal Quarter on Installbase forum from Luminoth, the source is Nintendo, i will attach them here:
in the FY 2017/2018 nintendo shipped:
- 7,3 Million consoles in the third quarter(Oct-Dec)
- 2.9 Million consoles in the fourth quarter(Jan-march)
That would be 10.2 million consoles total.
That is actually the minimum quantity of Switch consoles shipped by nintendo for the switch for Q3 and and Q4 in a fiscal year. Which makes sense since that was the first holiday season of the console and the production and logistics improve and get better with time.
For Reference PS5 managed to ship around 8 million consoles in their first 2 quarters( holiday 2020 to march 2021)
Given this reporting from Bloomberg:
An estimate of 10 million + of consoles shipped in a fiscal year( so until march 2025) makes it practically certain that the launch of the console is going to happen in the last two quarters of the fiscal year, which means starting from October 2024.
If you think Nintendo can add 2-3 million of consoles to that estimated, 10 million, number from Bloomberg, because the demand is going to be huge and Nintendo will be willing to pay for additional storage of units for the launch, you would still fall with the earliest launch in September.
Indeed for historical reference, the switch at launch, managed to ship 2,7 million units in march of 2017.
Of course, the shipment numbers for the new switch won't 100% reflect the shipments per quarter in 2017/2018, but the total numbers of shipped consoles will probably be in a similar ball-park, but probably a bit more skewed towards Q4 (jan-March 2025) due to the logistics involved in launching a new product.
So something like:
- 6,5 million for Q3
- 3,5 million for Q4
My prediction based on this reporting would be:
Announcement: March/April
Reveal: June
Launch: October/September