Global Sales Ranking - Week 99

[friendlyfamine]

RolStoppable said:

friendlyfamine said:

It just passed the PS4 in Week 42 lol. It's 500k ahead, and It's still holiday season. In the next 2 weeks, I would expect a 1 million lead, provided that the Switch's Week 44 is comparable to the PS4's. It's hard to say if it'll end up beating the PS4 by the end of its first year, but it would have to be selling over 300k weekly in order for that to happen iirc. That wouldn't be easy, as discluding holiday season the only time the Switch has pulled 300k in a week was Odyssey's launch week and Switch's first-week launch. But I don't know if that was heavily butchered by stock issues.

Switch would have to sell 300k weekly in the final eight weeks to maintain (read: no additional gains or losses) its lead after week 44, because the PS4 sold ~2.4m units in weeks 45-52. If Switch built up a lead of 1m through week 44, a weekly sales rate of 200k would be enough to get over the finish line with a lead of 200k over the PS4. That isn't a tall order.

It isn't exactly a tall order but my point is that it isn't exactly easy for it to beat the PS4's first year. I never said it wasn't possible, and sure my maths weren't completely accurate, but even if we decide to use a 200k rate from now even that is quite unusual for Switch sales. From the Switch's week 10 to 30 (20 weeks) it sold under 200k consistently except the one week of 21 which was Splatoon 2's launch, heavily carried by Japan. Although after that, discounting weeks 32, 33 and 34 it has been selling over 200k. So if it can keep that momentum for the remaining of the next few months it will beat the PS4, but we haven't got any titles for January and February that are looking to keep that 200k+ sales rate. Unless we assume the Switch will naturally sell itself for the titles it already has available, along with the fact that there were presumably "stock issues" which held the aforementioned weeks of 10-30 back, then I guess it may be fine. But again, it's really hard to say what will happen. Two weeks left in December to gain a more sizeable lead still.