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

[DonFerrari]

Mnementh said:

DonFerrari said:

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.

Yep you are right on your assumptions imho. What we do know is that Sony got to meet their demand faster than Nintendo, but we don't really know if that was because Nintendo had a harder time rumping up Switch or if Sony read better the demand. But I agree with you that between the 1-2 months on shipping channels, new contracts, preparation and all 3-6 months to totally answer a shortage.

We weren't saying holiday doesn't impact demand (we know it does) nor that launching in a holiday wouldn't (it could). The point was just that if the console was sold out out of holiday launch there isn't much impact on sales that launching on holiday would cause because there would be no extra supply (even more when we had all those reports of lack of parts for Switch).

Miyamotoo said:

DonFerrari said:

Nope man, the fact that I don't consider they valid doesn't mean I ignored, it means it isn't enough reason to justify the cost. If they are doing a full year run to sell 25M, there is very little reason to not be able to adjust production to end up overproducing 5M and shipping that on the next quarter. Because first they would be producing their regular amount, second there would be the already shipped amount, third the FYQ1 would be a slower month so that 5M would be sitting on Nintendo shelves for over 1 quarter just to use your supposed bargain.

They never said they couldn't produce more than 2m... but after launch they showed they couldn't by not being able to have steady production at all to meet your supposed production level.

If you produce 500k/month you would need to stock for 8 months (instead of 4 months) prior to launch, go again and do the maths on the cost of having all that sitting on shelves (8 months at an average 2M consoles stored at 299 USD value... that is 600M dollars on 8 months, that would have a financial cost of some dozen million).

No, I gave you good and logical possibilities why that maybe would make sense, and why thats not throwing away money, you ignored all that and you were acting like everything was set in stone. It's pointless to reply any more on this matter.

Again, initial stock plan for launch, and increasing production after launch are two totally different things.

I used that number like example production after launch where they selling everything they ship and they need higher production, not before launch.

Man, you think you gave good possibilities. You thinking it is a good reason doesn't make it a good reason. Those you gave would surpass a 5M storing cost.

Yes preparing and after launch are different, with before launch usually being even slower than after launch. But you are yet to explain how would Nintendo suddenly be able to make 4M consoles when they couldn't make 2M (that sold out instantly) and took 8 months to improve production. Also you won't be able to explain why hold 8 months to a launch to have that many consoles.