Online retailers ShopTo and GameSeek are very popular here in the UK. Their rapid delivery times and often-unbeatable prices draw many consumers in, especially when compared to high street gaming specialist stores like GAME or even CEX on some occasions (CEX deal only with used stock). MCV got an insight into how these retailers feel about the current state of the Nintendo Switch, its sales performance and the stock issues that are surrounding Nintendo’s latest console in an interview.
Alison Fraser, head of commercial at ShopTo talks of strong sales of Nintendo Switch:
“After a strong first quarter for new releases, the typical summer months are quieter, however, Switch new releases and consoles have been a welcomed revenue driver over the past couple of months.”
Fraser goes on to explain about stock shortages and the importance of more stock coming in over the holiday period:
“Switch has been a good news story on a whole. Yes, stock has been short and we – along with the rest of retail – could have sold more units, but the sales have continued with every stock drop. It seems like many third-party publishers have been wary to launch new releases until the success was gauged over the first six months of the console.
“The titles that have launched have generally been short of stock, so builds must start to increase through Q4. There does still seem to be a shortage of Christmas launches, although the titles that are coming are top titles that should be very successful.”
Meanwhile, Stephen Staley, who is the CEO over at GameSeek, mentions about communication issues between Nintendo and UK distributors:
“It seems there are communication issues with Nintendo Europe and the UK distributors. I feel like we should be trading direct, in all honesty. We got many more Wii consoles ten years ago; yet there are far more Switch consoles on the market.
Dam Alison Fraser must be some type of robot to have repeated the same comment three times over in succession lol wonder wt that was like
Thanks for pointing that out! I’m not entirely sure why it had repeated. I can confirm that Alison is not a robot but in fact a real person.
For a second I readed Stop N Swap and I immediately thinked about Banjo-Kazooie on the Switch.
But it’s not :(
…Readed?
yeah I wrote wrong.
read