My prediction: PS4 will outsell Switch lifetime

[Normchacho]

Mnementh said:

Normchacho said:

The problem with that theory is that VGC has the comparison up to week 33, but we know what the gap is at week 40 now. We know that the gap between the Switch and the 3DS shrinks from 2.1 to 1.5 million units in those 7 weeks. Then you need to account for the fact that December 2011 was the best month the 3DS ever had by a huge margin. It sold 4.76m units and I have no idea why 3DS sales spiked so sharply, but there's no evidence to suggest the Switch will have a December anywhere near that strong.

If the Switch ends 2017 with 12.5m units sold, which I think is very doable, but not a lock, then it will need to average 870K a month to match the PS4s first year. Between April and October the Switch averaged 785k a month. That's the only data we have for the Switch that's outside the launch or the holidays. It's doable, but not likely.

If the Switch has 12.5M at the end of 2017 (around week 45 or so) it is 1.5M ahead of PS4 at the same time. Also you average from April to October, while early on the Switch was supply-constrained and is even now in Japan. Even if you ignore that: second year is for basically every console much better than the first. Selling an extra 100K seems very conservative, usually consoles have more like 30-50% more in the second year.

If the Switch is at 12.5M at the end of 2017 it will be 1.3M ahead of the PS4 at the same time. But! because of the misaligned launches the PS4 was ramping up to the end of the year so it sold 3 million units in that time frame. 1.7M units in January and February isn't a certainty. Heck, it's not even a certainty that the Switch hits 12.5M units at the end of 2017. That's still 2.4M units in the last 3 weeks of December after taking what was probably 40+ days to do it that same amount over November and the first week+ of December...