Nintendo expects to sell 2 million Switches in the first month

While Nintendo's earnings didn't look so good this quarter, President and CEO Tatsumi Kimishima apparently has a rosy outlook for the launch of his company's next-gen Switch portable console. According to the Wall Street Journal Tokyo correspondent Takashi Mochizuki, Nintendo plans to ship 2 million Switch consoles when it goes on sale in March 2017.

Although we don't have a firm March release date yet, the bulk of that 2 million figure will likely be made up of pre-order sales. For comparison's sake, Sony had 1 million pre-orders for the PS4 and shipped another 1 million units at launch in the US alone. The original Wii was likewise a hot seller off the bat and even the Wii U moved over two million units in the US and Japan during its first six weeks in late 2012 -- although Nintendo eventually fell way short of its plan to sell 100 million.