Shadow1980 said:
The XBO & PS4 benefited from launching in the holidays. The PS4 launched on Nov. 15 and the XBO on Nov. 22. A week after that was Black Friday. Not a damn thing happened a week or two after the Switch was launched, and not 5-6 weeks later, either.
While we don't get weekly sales figures from NPD, the monthly data makes it clear that launching in November helps for sales in the first 5-8 weeks. Barring supply issues (a factor with the 360, which had a poor launch), average weekly sales in December don't simply crater. They almost always remain far above non-holiday month sales in the first calendar year. Meanwhile, we have a few systems that launched in the first half of the year besides the Switch, including the 3DS, PSP, and GBA. They all dropped significantly in month two, right down to about what the baseline was on up through October.
Furthermore, Japanese data suggests rapid drops past the first week for systems released outside Q4, while November launches don't see their weekly sales drop until after Christmas/New Years week. Q1-Q2 releases like the Switch, PS4, and 3DS exhibited "hockey stick" curves for sales in the first 13 weeks, while holiday releases like the Wii U, PS3, Wii, DS, and PSP did not, exhibiting other behaviors instead (the Wii U had a "flight of steps" curve, the PS3 had a "sine wave" curve, and the others had zig-zag curves).
While it would take me a while to collect the data and make the charts to put it in pictures to give you the "daily average" for a given month, the data is pretty clear: launching during the holidays helps.
If you look at the Switch's sales from the April-September period, it's doing fine, as that Q2+Q3 chart shows. It would've done better had it not been for supply issues. It should sell well over 2M in Q4, which isn't bad, either.
As for that "first full calendar year" chart, that's the first Jan.-Dec. period for every system on the chart except for the Switch. The Switch is the first "home console" that launched in March (yeah, I know, it's a "hybrid," but let's not argue over nomenclature). Every other console back to the PS2 was a Q4 release, the DC, N64, & PS1 were September releases, and the Saturn was a May release. The Switch missed the first two months of 2017, but the launch month makes up for having only one month in Q1. It's close enough to yet far enough from the beginning of the year to where for the sake of argument we can use the Switch's 2017 as a point of comparison to the PS4 & XBO's 2014, the 360's 2006, the PS2's 2001, etc.
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