PS4 VS Switch lifetime sales, which console will sell the most?

[Mnementh]

DonFerrari said:

Mnementh said:

Dunno what was the case with Wii. Nintendo was probably overly conservative and didn't wanted any stock staying in storerooms. Well, they had plenty of units in storage with the WiiU.

But the Wii is the outlier here. Which other console had supply constraints over an extended period of time globally? Look, the Switch goes well, but is by now long available in most parts of the world. Dunno if Japan is still supply constrained, but maybe they still can't access supply correctly there or demand is increasing in the time they ramp up production and so invalidating the earlier research. But in the US or europe Nintendo meets demand. Same for PS4, it was not for long supply constrained.

Well, I can understand being conservative even with preorders on launch, but shortages for 2 years straight can't be only being conservative.

For Switch it took 8 months(?) to get to attend demand and for PS4 about 4 months. So we can't really be confident of how much the impact of a different launch window would be.

The months are about right. You need months to get a contract with a manufacturer, get the supply chain running, get the quality in order and so on. Then you have shipping, that probably takes around a month. So between the decision in Sony or Nintendo headquarter: 'we need more units' and more units hitting the market I would guess 3-6 months. And it's still a guessing game, you have to guess right how much more demand you have to meet, otherwise you sit on unsold inventory and that costs too.

As I said Wii was an outlier. What happened there, your guess is as good as mine. But what we see from PS4 and Switch is what to expect from successful consoles.

But back to the argument that holidays have no impact at sales at launch because of supply constraints: that assumes fixed production capacities. That would mean thought through, that if demand is lower than workers at Sony or Nintendo sit around, as they have nothing to do. Obviously production capacity can be scaled to demand, as it is given to outside companies doing that stuff. So supply constraints are mainly a wrong guess about the demand.