Nintendo Labo Sold Only 30% of Shipment in Japan - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 May 2018 / 4,982 Views
Nintendo Labo did debut at the top of the Japanese charts in its first week, however, it appears that the two Labo kits only sold 30 percent of the initial shipment, according to Media Create.
The two Labo kits sold a combined 119,039 units. That would put initial shipments for the two kits at around 400,000 units.
The figure could mean one of two things. Either, Nintendo expected it to sell better or the company wanted to overship in its first week, so it wouldn't need to ship more units over the coming weeks.
Despite debuting at the top of the Japanese charts, Switch sales did decrease week-on-week in the country.
Thanks DualShockers.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Ouch.
floppity flop
Not a good start. Dont see this thing taking off.
Brilliant... So they couldn't ship enough of the Classic systems, but they had no qualms about shipping too many Labo kits? Nintendo, what are you doing?
That doesn't sound like a big deal to me. Toys are generally sold over time and often ramp up gradually from word of mouth, unlike video-games where the first week is disproportionately massive.
I just don't see the appeal of expensive cardboard. Apparently I'm not the only one.
Good!
Seems to me the price is fairly prohibitive.
Collapsing like a house of cardboard.
Looks like it's going to be a bomb.
Makes sense. It's a physical only release, so the kits are in excess to keep up with any potential demand. Still, 30% and it still topped the charts - why are people calling it a flop?
Well, family-friend games sell more over their lifetime than first week, more than other games. We see the wii like games selling 100kish in first wek and ending selling 3 million lifetime.
Dang I guess Nintendo overestimated Labo.
i still don't really understand what labo actually is. its more confusing than wii u
Wasn’t that site NintendoEnthusiast bragging about how this is going to do better than GoW, based off of Amazon JP preorders?
I think it's too early to call it a flop, doing bad in Japan doesn't mean it will do bad everywhere else. Also, aside from R&D, Labo probably don't cost much for Nintendo to produce, so their profit margin could be very high.
And it didn't even do bad in Japan. It sold REALLY WELL first week in Japan. It sold more in Japan alone than I thought it'd sell worldwide first week.
Aren't shipments just sales to retailers? I am not sure exactly how it works in other places, but in Europe Nintendo doesn't actually sell directly at the retail chain, but rather sells the product to the retail chain for resale via retail outlets. If it’s the same in Japan, then it is not a question of a Nintendo strategy as much as a retailer strategy.
Hm. I wouldn't see Japan as being as into LABO as other countries, but not sure. Still, if Nintendo shipped that many then seems like they were vetting big on it's initial success. LABO is something that will take word of mouth longterm. I just hope this doesn't mean that LABO was the reason for expecting 20 million systems sold in 2018. Such a product would be too hard to predict in any situation. I expect LABO to sell more on a long term basis and at holiday/family time.
This is actually an outstanding result when you consider the price is $80 for some paper toys.
It also comes with software you know.
Not that I agree with the price, it's just that there's more to it than just cardboard.
It's a product that comes in a very big and very heavy box, and must be shipped in a different manner than the rest of its games. Their are logistical reasons why they may want to make larger shipments. When I worked at Best Buy, we would tend to get larger shipments of peripheral based games than we could realistically sell first week.
haha the flop comments are absurd. Doesn't matter how many Nintendo shipped, the fact is it sold fantastic first week in Japan! The two scenarios is it either sold fantastic but Nintendo thought it was gonna do even way more than that, or it sold fantastic and Nintendo want be shipping cardboard kits every week. Either way its Japan launch was fantastic!
