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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - When will the Switch outsell 3DS (lifetime)?

 

When will the Switch ousell the 3DS (lifetime numbers)?

2020, because it will do 240M lifetime. 21 10.50%
 
2021 44 22.00%
 
2022 36 18.00%
 
2023 14 7.00%
 
2024 7 3.50%
 
2025 2 1.00%
 
2026 1 0.50%
 
2027 1 0.50%
 
2028, Nintendo won't quit. Matter of honor. 4 2.00%
 
Never, 3DS is king. Sorry, Switch. 70 35.00%
 
Total:200
StarDoor on 18 September 2017
fatslob-:O said:
Possibly never or on the more optimistic side, in about 5 years ...

Even Nintendo themselves are expecting that the Switch will be behind the 3DS in their respective first calendar years. 3DS will have sold 12.5M units by the end of 2011 while the Switch will either end with 10/11M units at the end of 2017 in spite of the fact that the Switch has had a stronger line up so far ... (Nintendo expects to ship 13M Switch units by the end of this fiscal year.)

For the next consecutive 4 years, annual sales would have to grow by roughly 50%(!) compared to 2017 and be maintained too all under the assumption that the 3DS sell a little under 75M units ... (Means that Switch would have to sell at least around 16M units units each year to be able to outsell 3DS in 5 years.)

For the Switch to be able to outsell 3DS, the platform would have to track pretty closely in comparison to the PS4 all the while it won't be able to reap the benefits of pricing and revisions early on like it's predecessors did (DS/3DS) ...

Do you not understand the context of Nintendo expecting Switch to be behind 3DS shipments for this fiscal year?

Let me give you a hint: 3DS was never sold out.

Wii went from 16.5 million in its first year to 24 million in its second year, and DS went from 11 million to 21 million, so I don't know why you've propped up a 50% YoY increase as some impossible goal, especially when Switch is supply constrained and is clearly not selling as much as its demand would allow. All Nintendo has to do to increase sales next year is produce more units.

For reference, look at the quarterly breakdowns of Wii shipments:

WII Quarterly Shipments Percentage of FY FY Totals
Dec 2006 3.19 54.62%  
Mar 2007 2.65 45.38% 5.84
Jun 2007 3.43 18.4%  
Sep 2007 3.9 21.0%  
Dec 2007 6.96 37.4%  
Mar 2008 4.32 23.2% 18.61
Jun 2008 5.17 19.9%  
Sep 2008 4.93 19.0%  
Dec 2008 10.41 40.1%  
Mar 2009 5.43 20.9% 25.94
Jun 2009 2.23 10.9%  
Sep 2009 3.52 17.1%  
Dec 2009 11.31 55.1%  
Mar 2010 3.48 16.9% 20.54
Jun 2010 3.04 20.2%  
Sep 2010 1.93 12.8%  
Dec 2010 8.74 58.0%  
Mar 2011 1.37 9.1% 15.08
Jun 2011 1.56 15.9%  
Sep 2011 1.79 18.2%  
Dec 2011 5.61 57.0%  
Mar 2012 0.88 8.9% 9.84
Jun 2012 0.71 17.8%  
Sep 2012 0.62 15.5%  
Dec 2012 2.2 55.1%  
Mar 2013 0.46 11.5% 3.99

The holiday quarter for 2007 only made up 37% of the FY's shipments, and the holiday quarter for 2008 was just 40%. This makes sense, as these are the two years during which Wii was constantly sold out. In 2009, Nintendo's manufacturing capacity finally matched demand, and they were able to sell 55% of the year's consoles in the holiday quarter, a trend which continued all the way up to Wii U's release.

From this, we can gather that Nintendo does not hold back as much stock for the holidays when a console is constantly sold out during the middle of the year.

Now, let's look at 3DS:

3DS Quarterly Shipments Percentage of FY FY Totals
Mar 2011 3.61 100.0% 3.61
Jun 2011 0.71 5.3%  
Sep 2011 2.36 17.5%  
Dec 2011 8.35 61.8%  
Mar 2012 2.1 15.5% 13.52
Jun 2012 1.87 13.4%  
Sep 2012 3.19 22.9%  
Dec 2012 7.65 54.8%  
Mar 2013 1.25 9.0% 13.96
Jun 2013 1.39 11.4%  
Sep 2013 2.5 20.4%  
Dec 2013 7.76 63.4%  
Mar 2014 0.59 4.8% 12.24
Jun 2014 0.81 9.3%  
Sep 2014 1.28 14.7%  
Dec 2014 4.99 57.2%  
Mar 2015 1.65 18.9% 8.73
Jun 2015 1.01 14.9%  
Sep 2015 1.27 18.7%  
Dec 2015 3.6 53.0%  
Mar 2016 0.91 13.4% 6.79
Jun 2016 0.94 12.9%  
Sep 2016 1.78 24.5%  
Dec 2016 3.73 51.3%  
Mar 2017 0.82 11.3% 7.27

Do you see the difference? In its first full fiscal year, 62% of 3DS shipments occurred during the holiday quarter.

Why was this? It was because Nintendo massively overestimated demand for the console, and produced more than retailers would even order. This led to Nintendo infamously cutting the price by $80 in August. The next few holidays have a similar ratio, going from around 55-60%.

The 2016 holidays had the lowest ratio of any 3DS holiday, and it was unsurprisingly a period of exceptionally low stock for the console:

https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/19/14006908/where-to-buy-a-nintendo-3ds
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/social/questions/detail/qid/47320/~/no-stock-of-2ds-anywhere%3F
https://nintendotimes.com/2016/12/04/nintendo-2ds-3ds-selling-out-nationwide/

When Nintendo can produce enough consoles to completely meet demand for the year, roughly 55% of shipments happen during the holiday quarter. When the console is supply constrained, they can go as low as the upper 30s.

If Nintendo only ships 10 million for this fiscal year, it is guaranteed that the holiday quarter shipments will be much lower than what they actually could have sold. Switch shipped 1.96 million units during the April-June quarter this year. If you assume that every non-holiday quarter is the exact same (which is lowballing it, as shown by the increased supply and sales in Japan and the US for this quarter,) then, to reach 10 million, the holiday quarter will only be 4.12 million, or 41.2% of the FY's shipments. As you can see, this percentage is in line with the Wii while it was supply constrained. Interestingly, if Switch ships 1.96 for Q1, Q2, and Q4 (once again, a lowball estimate), that would be 5.88 million, which is higher than what 3DS did in its non-holiday quarters for the first fiscal year: 5.17 million.

In reality, non-holiday shipments of 1.96 million suggests true demand of 13 million, and this number could be higher depending on how much more Switch ships during Q2. This unmet demand will spill over into subsequent quarters, which is why it is illogical to assume that Switch's 2017 will be its best year, and that sales can't increase substantially in the future.

In conclusion, Switch may have a lower first year than 3DS, but its long term prospects are better because the non-holiday months are making up a much larger portion of the year's sales, indicating that sales can increase substantially with better supply.



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flashfire926 on 18 September 2017
DaveTheMinion13 said:
Don't think it will......Nintendo already releasing 2 of its biggest system sellers in the first year.....meaning you won't see either for the rest of this gen of the Switch. Only thing left is Smash and Pokemon

But we will see 3d mario again on Switch. 

Galaxy 2 came out 3 years after galaxy 1.

3d world came out 3 years after galaxy 2.

Odyssey is coming out 4 years after 3d world. 

I don't know what you are using to make the conclusion 3d mario won't show up on Switch again. Unless you think Switch successor will come out within 4 years.



Bet with Intrinsic:

The Switch will outsell 3DS (based on VGchartz numbers), according to me, while Intrinsic thinks the opposite will hold true. One month avatar control for the loser's avatar.

StarDoor on 18 September 2017
rolltide101x said:
StarDoor said:

After selling 11 million in 2017 alone, you think Switch will go on to sell between 14 and 29 million over the next six years, or an average of 2 to 5 million per year? How can one browse VGChartz and still know so little about the sales patterns of consoles?

Ok, 1st off it is at 5 million. (Neither of us know how the demand or supply will be for the rest of the year). I said the same thing about the Wii U (which sold less than I predicted....)

 

But I wil say this it WILL NOT go over 40 million for a fact. Rather it ends up closer to 25 or 40 is up for grabs

It was 5.4 million as of the end of July, and it's more like 6.5 million as of right now in the middle of September. Also, do you seriously think that 11 million isn't a reasonable number for the entire year? After selling 5.4 million in five months, you think it'll sell less than that over the next five months, despite those months including the holiday season?

And who cares if the Wii U sold less than you predicted? Nintendo sold 255 million units of hardware in the seventh generation with their best-selling home console and best-selling handheld ever. People on VGChartz like to make predictions based on nothing but short-sighted "trends," so of course people like you were going to overestimate Wii U and 3DS. Wii and DS were huge, so why wouldn't their successors be?

Now we're seeing it in reverse with Switch: The eighth generation had Nintendo's worst-selling home console and worst-selling handheld ever, so people ignorantly thought that Nintendo would keep declining, without even considering the actual factors that lead to success or failure in the console market. That's why the average prediction for Switch here on VGChartz has gone from around 35 million in January (when people were just looking at Nintendo's poor 8th gen performance) to over 65 million today (now that we have concrete numbers and overwhelming evidence of Switch's popularity).

Clearly, though, some people just ignore the sales data entirely, which leads them to make predictions like "under 40 million." You will be proven wrong in 2020 at the latest.



Paul on 18 September 2017

I think most households will have multiple units by the end of the life cycle. 1 as a home console and one for each kid for road trips and stuff. Epic local multilayer while driving to the cottage and stuff. I see 4 in my household within 3 years.



flashfire926 on 18 September 2017
StarDoor said:
rolltide101x said:

Ok, 1st off it is at 5 million. (Neither of us know how the demand or supply will be for the rest of the year). I said the same thing about the Wii U (which sold less than I predicted....)

 

But I wil say this it WILL NOT go over 40 million for a fact. Rather it ends up closer to 25 or 40 is up for grabs

It was 5.4 million as of the end of July, and it's more like 6.5 million as of right now in the middle of September. Also, do you seriously think that 11 million isn't a reasonable number for the entire year? After selling 5.4 million in five months, you think it'll sell less than that over the next five months, despite those months including the holiday season?

And who cares if the Wii U sold less than you predicted? Nintendo sold 255 million units of hardware in the seventh generation with their best-selling home console and best-selling handheld ever. People on VGChartz like to make predictions based on nothing but short-sighted "trends," so of course people like you were going to overestimate Wii U and 3DS. Wii and DS were huge, so why wouldn't their successors be?

Now we're seeing it in reverse with Switch: The eighth generation had Nintendo's worst-selling home console and worst-selling handheld ever, so people ignorantly thought that Nintendo would keep declining, without even considering the actual factors that lead to success or failure in the console market. That's why the average prediction for Switch here on VGChartz has gone from around 35 million in January (when people were just looking at Nintendo's poor 8th gen performance) to over 65 million today (now that we have concrete numbers and overwhelming evidence of Switch's popularity).

Clearly, though, some people just ignore the sales data entirely, which leads them to make predictions like "under 40 million." You will be proven wrong in 2020 at the latest.

Instead of getting pissed, I think you should take advantage of this opportunity make a risk-free bet with him. Over 40 million switch sales equals you win  :P



Bet with Intrinsic:

The Switch will outsell 3DS (based on VGchartz numbers), according to me, while Intrinsic thinks the opposite will hold true. One month avatar control for the loser's avatar.

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Wyrdness on 18 September 2017
rolltide101x said:
StarDoor said:

After selling 11 million in 2017 alone, you think Switch will go on to sell between 14 and 29 million over the next six years, or an average of 2 to 5 million per year? How can one browse VGChartz and still know so little about the sales patterns of consoles?

Ok, 1st off it is at 5 million. (Neither of us know how the demand or supply will be for the rest of the year). I said the same thing about the Wii U (which sold less than I predicted....)

 

But I wil say this it WILL NOT go over 40 million for a fact. Rather it ends up closer to 25 or 40 is up for grabs

Willing to bet on that mate?



mountaindewslave on 18 September 2017

the 3DS isn't even selling much worse than the Switch currently and could shock and end up at like 80 million at this point. I honestly think that the Switch ending up over the 3DS is extremely questionable, particularly with it being at a higher price point. could happen, but don't be surprised if it doesn't. Nintendo would need to produce a lot of systems and the 3DS had some great boosts from different models.

At this point I would hesitantly say that the Switch will outsell the 3DS for the simple fact that it's both a handheld and home console, but it's far from a given. A lot depends on if Nintendo keeps the 3DS line alive the next few years. If they were to, say, announce a big game for the 3DS next year then all bets are off. That system currently just seems like it won't die



the_dengle on 18 September 2017

I would encourage those who are bearish on the Switch's chances in this contest to compare NPD sales between the two systems in question. The short version is that the Switch is probably close to 2 million after 6 months; a comparable amount of time after launch, the 3DS was still under 1.5 million and had already had its price cut to $170. It started selling better after the cut of course, but the Switch is putting up similar monthly numbers to post-price cut 3DS at nearly double the price!

Anyway I don't really care for making long-term predictions like this. I guess around 2022.

RolStoppable said:
Will have to target ~75m (probably a bit lower), so Switch for calendar years with rough estimates:

2017 - 10m

I hope they'll be able to ship more than that this year. The Holiday shortages will be crazy if their stock is that limited.



fatslob-:O on 18 September 2017
StarDoor said:

Do you not understand the context of Nintendo expecting Switch to be behind 3DS shipments for this fiscal year?

Let me give you a hint: 3DS was never sold out.

Yes I do understand the context in Switch being behind 3DS but supply is a short term problem ... 

StarDoor said:

Wii went from 16.5 million in its first year to 24 million in its second year, and DS went from 11 million to 21 million, so I don't know why you've propped up a 50% YoY increase as some impossible goal, especially when Switch is supply constrained and is clearly not selling as much as its demand would allow. All Nintendo has to do to increase sales next year is produce more units.

For reference, look at the quarterly breakdowns of Wii shipments:

WII Quarterly Shipments Percentage of FY FY Totals
Dec 2006 3.19 54.62%  
Mar 2007 2.65 45.38% 5.84
Jun 2007 3.43 18.4%  
Sep 2007 3.9 21.0%  
Dec 2007 6.96 37.4%  
Mar 2008 4.32 23.2% 18.61
Jun 2008 5.17 19.9%  
Sep 2008 4.93 19.0%  
Dec 2008 10.41 40.1%  
Mar 2009 5.43 20.9% 25.94
Jun 2009 2.23 10.9%  
Sep 2009 3.52 17.1%  
Dec 2009 11.31 55.1%  
Mar 2010 3.48 16.9% 20.54
Jun 2010 3.04 20.2%  
Sep 2010 1.93 12.8%  
Dec 2010 8.74 58.0%  
Mar 2011 1.37 9.1% 15.08
Jun 2011 1.56 15.9%  
Sep 2011 1.79 18.2%  
Dec 2011 5.61 57.0%  
Mar 2012 0.88 8.9% 9.84
Jun 2012 0.71 17.8%  
Sep 2012 0.62 15.5%  
Dec 2012 2.2 55.1%  
Mar 2013 0.46 11.5% 3.99

The holiday quarter for 2007 only made up 37% of the FY's shipments, and the holiday quarter for 2008 was just 40%. This makes sense, as these are the two years during which Wii was constantly sold out. In 2009, Nintendo's manufacturing capacity finally matched demand, and they were able to sell 55% of the year's consoles in the holiday quarter, a trend which continued all the way up to Wii U's release.

From this, we can gather that Nintendo does not hold back as much stock for the holidays when a console is constantly sold out during the middle of the year.

Are you really going to compare Switch's shortages to the Wii's ?! The Wii was selling at comfortably above 40% more of it's MSRP for nearly two years straight since it's debut while Switch is selling at 17% higher than it's MSRP right now after just over 6 months and the consensus is that demand is already met in Europe ... 

Not saying it isn't going to spike again during the launch of Mario and the holidays of course but after that price should renormalize in as little as 4 months ... 

StarDoor said:

Now, let's look at 3DS:

3DS Quarterly Shipments Percentage of FY FY Totals
Mar 2011 3.61 100.0% 3.61
Jun 2011 0.71 5.3%  
Sep 2011 2.36 17.5%  
Dec 2011 8.35 61.8%  
Mar 2012 2.1 15.5% 13.52
Jun 2012 1.87 13.4%  
Sep 2012 3.19 22.9%  
Dec 2012 7.65 54.8%  
Mar 2013 1.25 9.0% 13.96
Jun 2013 1.39 11.4%  
Sep 2013 2.5 20.4%  
Dec 2013 7.76 63.4%  
Mar 2014 0.59 4.8% 12.24
Jun 2014 0.81 9.3%  
Sep 2014 1.28 14.7%  
Dec 2014 4.99 57.2%  
Mar 2015 1.65 18.9% 8.73
Jun 2015 1.01 14.9%  
Sep 2015 1.27 18.7%  
Dec 2015 3.6 53.0%  
Mar 2016 0.91 13.4% 6.79
Jun 2016 0.94 12.9%  
Sep 2016 1.78 24.5%  
Dec 2016 3.73 51.3%  
Mar 2017 0.82 11.3% 7.27

Do you see the difference? In its first full fiscal year, 62% of 3DS shipments occurred during the holiday quarter.

Why was this? It was because Nintendo massively overestimated demand for the console, and produced more than retailers would even order. This led to Nintendo infamously cutting the price by $80 in August. The next few holidays have a similar ratio, going from around 55-60%.

The 2016 holidays had the lowest ratio of any 3DS holiday, and it was unsurprisingly a period of exceptionally low stock for the console:

https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/19/14006908/where-to-buy-a-nintendo-3ds
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/social/questions/detail/qid/47320/~/no-stock-of-2ds-anywhere%3F
https://nintendotimes.com/2016/12/04/nintendo-2ds-3ds-selling-out-nationwide/

I thought it was because Nintendo had overvalued the system ... 

StarDoor said:

When Nintendo can produce enough consoles to completely meet demand for the year, roughly 55% of shipments happen during the holiday quarter. When the console is supply constrained, they can go as low as the upper 30s.

If Nintendo only ships 10 million for this fiscal year, it is guaranteed that the holiday quarter shipments will be much lower than what they actually could have sold. Switch shipped 1.96 million units during the April-June quarter this year. If you assume that every non-holiday quarter is the exact same (which is lowballing it, as shown by the increased supply and sales in Japan and the US for this quarter,) then, to reach 10 million, the holiday quarter will only be 4.12 million, or 41.2% of the FY's shipments. As you can see, this percentage is in line with the Wii while it was supply constrained. Interestingly, if Switch ships 1.96 for Q1, Q2, and Q4 (once again, a lowball estimate), that would be 5.88 million, which is higher than what 3DS did in its non-holiday quarters for the first fiscal year: 5.17 million.

In reality, non-holiday shipments of 1.96 million suggests true demand of 13 million, and this number could be higher depending on how much more Switch ships during Q2. This unmet demand will spill over into subsequent quarters, which is why it is illogical to assume that Switch's 2017 will be its best year, and that sales can't increase substantially in the future.

In conclusion, Switch may have a lower first year than 3DS, but its long term prospects are better because the non-holiday months are making up a much larger portion of the year's sales, indicating that sales can increase substantially with better supply.

I never assumed 2017 was going to be the Switch's best year and if Nintendo does need large shipments in the holidays there's an easy solution known as stockpiling where Nintendo keeps the production of Switch at 100% during low demand seasons (winter/spring/summer) then introduce the surplus at holiday season (fall) ... 

Yes, Switch's non-holiday months are better than the 3DS so far but this time Nintendo went with a fairly different release strategy ... 

Let's take a look at a moment at why that was observing the 3DS's major releases in each of it's year ... 

2011 - SM3DL and MK7 all released in the fall season, the only major titles outside of that season in the same year was Nintendogs + Cats and OoT 3D

2012 - AC:NL in fall with NSMB2 in summer 

2013 - Pokemon X/Y in fall and outside of that season was Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Tomodachi Life and the other notable game Monster Hunter 4 was released at the end of summer ... 

2014 - SMB 3DS 

Whereas in 2017 the Switch launched with BotW, released MK8:DE in spring, released Splatoon 2 in summer and will launch SMO in the fall so far ... 



StarDoor on 18 September 2017
the_dengle said:

I would encourage those who are bearish on the Switch's chances in this contest to compare NPD sales between the two systems in question. The short version is that the Switch is probably close to 2 million after 6 months; a comparable amount of time after launch, the 3DS was still under 1.5 million and had already had its price cut to $170. It started selling better after the cut of course, but the Switch is putting up similar monthly numbers to post-price cut 3DS at nearly double the price!

Anyway I don't really care for making long-term predictions like this. I guess around 2022.

After 5 months in the US, Switch was at 1.794 million and 3DS was at 0.922 million. 3DS sold 235k in August 2011. Unfortunately, we don't know the numbers for Switch, but we do know that Switch beat PS4 and Xbox One for that month, so it was probably in the ballpark of 200k.

In summary, yes, Switch is selling as well as 3DS was selling after its price cut, and Switch is $130 more expensive. This is why I find it absurd how anyone is predicting 40 million or less: Japan and the United States alone will pass that mark.