| Shadow1980 said: The problem with WW sales data is that it never tells the whole story. Regional differences in release timing and buying habits have a big impact. The Switch was a rare example of a simultaneous worldwide launch. The PS2, PS3, PS4, and XBO all had staggered launches, with at least one region not getting a launch until several months after We also have to take into account that the Switch is a March launch. No major home console has ever done that in the U.S.; since the PS2's launch, they've all been Q4 launches, and before that they were usually Q3 launches (the SNES, Genesis, and TG-16, were August launches, while the Master System PS1, N64, and Dreamcast were all September launches, as was the NES's nationwide launch; the Saturn was originally planned for launch in Sept. '95 before being pushed forward to May). By time the Switch gets to 10 months on the market, it will have had both a launch month (which effectively did a quarter's worth of sales), a full holiday quarter, and two full quarters inbetween. Meanwhile, every other system released this century has had for its first ten months a single holiday sales period, that being in its launch quarter, and 7 or 8 non-holiday months following it. Holiday launches are usually modest holidays compared to the holiday of the first full year, plus they are never predictive of first-year sales. The fairest comparison is to break things down on a region-by-region basis and compare the Switch to other systems with comparable sales. Also, it would be best to compare sales for the first full year when possible, ignoring sales from the launch holiday for Q4 launches. In the U.S., the Switch has so far performed similar to what the PS4 did in 2014, pulling down nearly identical Q1 and Q2 numbers (not just together but separate as well), resulting in March-June sales only 1.26% less than what the PS4 did in the Jan.-June period of 2014:
Normally, Q3 sales are up from Q2 sales, though they have been known to be less (usually because there was something to boost sales in Q2 that wasn't present in Q3). For the sake of argument, let's assume the Switch pulls 700k this quarter, slightly up from last quarter. That puts the Switch at 2272. Now, there is quite a bit of variability, but on average Q4 is around half the year's sales (I don't have time to do the math to get the exact average). So, we can make a reasonable estimate of about 4.5 million units for the Switch for 2017 in the U.S. Japan has seen the Switch outperform every non-Nintendo system for the past two generations for first-year sales, though it's underperforming against the Wii and soon will be back to underperforming against the 3DS. We should expect it to be at around 1.6M by the end of this quarter (assuming an average of 25k/week for the next ten weeks), and a reasonable assumption for Q4 is 1.4 to 1.6 million. A best-guess estimate for the year in Japan should be at around 3 million, give or take. I don't have time to go over Europe, but if VGC is any indication, the Switch will fall somewhere between the U.S. and Japan there, probably closer to the former. So, let's just say 4M. Between the main three regions, that's 11-12M. Rest-of-world sales might boost that another 10% or so. Overall, we should expect around 12-13M globally, far less than what the Wii did in 2007, but about on par with the 3DS's 2011 performance and not too far behind the PS4's 2014 performance. Unless the Switch has an absolutely terrible holiday season this year, I don't forsee any scenario where the Switch doesn't surpass 10 million units this year, and it ought to pass that milestone by a decent margin. |
The staggered launch issue is flattened out to not matter much at all over time. So looking at the first year of sales means that data doesn't matter, unless the staggered launch was over a full year.
Full year data may include 2 holiday time frames for other consoles while only one for Switch due to its March launch. Basically, looking at the comparison data I provided, only two consoles were able to hit 10MM without having 2 holiday sales periods, Wii and PS4, and Switch is well on its way to join that club.
I see no value in looking at region specific, unless you just want to compare region to region. WW sales is what is more interesting and what is the focal point of almost any console to console sales discussion. I would also argue that this is the primary / only figure developers and analysts discuss as well.
