I was wondering recently what Switch's future YOY sales might look like. Of course there's no way anyone could predict that with any degree of certainty, but because we already know Switch's first year sales numbers, I thought, why not to take that number and calculate total sales against known sales curves of previous Nintendo systems. By no means it has any scientific purpose. It's more like "what-if" game, if you will, so don't take it too seriously.
The data represents recurring sales over a period of 52/53 weeks (depends on a year), since launch(s) and their percentages. I've decided to go back as far as gen 4 as I think VGC DB doesn't have enough Nintendo systems to see any clear sales patterns or calculate averages. Gen 4, 5 and 6 numbers are rough calendar estimation of annual shipments, based on Nintendo's reports. I split them into weekly figures and shifted accordingly to match launch dates, so they won't be super accurate, but good enough for the purpose of this activity.
| SNES | N64 | GBA | GCN | DS | Wii | 3DS | WiiU | |
| Year 1 | 48% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 30% | 68% | 100% | 100% |
| Year 2 | 90% | 84% | 90% | 62% | 68% | 100% | 94% | 94% |
| Year 3 | 100% | 70% | 99% | 87% | 92% | 93% | 97% | 90% |
| Year 4 | 59% | 41% | 89% | 54% | 97% | 90% | 68% | 71% |
| Year 5 | 44% | 23% | 50% | 32% | 100% | 69% | 50% | 8% |
| Year 6 | 36% | 2% | 26% | 8% | 82% | 37% | 53% | 1% |
As you can see, generally Nintendo consoles split into two categories. The ones which have had their peaks in year 1 and those which haven't.
| N64 | GCN | GBA | 3DS | WiiU | DS | SNES | Wii | ||
| Year 1 | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 30% | 48% | 68% | |
| Year 2 | 84% | 62% | 90% | 94% | 94% | 68% | 90% | 100% | |
| Year 3 | 70% | 87% | 99% | 97% | 90% | 92% | 100% | 93% | |
| Year 4 | 41% | 54% | 89% | 68% | 71% | 97% | 59% | 90% | |
| Year 5 | 23% | 32% | 50% | 50% | 8% | 100% | 44% | 69% | |
| Year 6 | 2% | 8% | 26% | 53% | 1% | 82% | 36% | 37% |
Let's put Switch's first year figure (around 15.3M) in that table and see what we're going to end up with, if Switch follows the same sales curves.
| N64 | GCN | GBA | 3DS | WiiU | DS | SNES | Wii | ||
| Year 1 | 15.3M | 15.3M | 15.3M | 15.3M | 15.3M | 15.3M | 15.3M | 15.3M | |
| Year 2 | 12.9M | 9.5M | 13.8M | 14.5M | 14.4M | 24.7M | 26.5M | 22.4M | |
| Year 3 | 10.7M | 13.4M | 15.2M | 14.8M | 13.8M | 40.1M | 31.8M | 20.3M | |
| Year 4 | 6.3M | 8.2M | 13.6M | 10.5M | 10.8M | 46.8M | 17.1M | 19.7M | |
| Year 5 | 3.6M | 4.8M | 7.6M | 7.7M | 1.2M | 50.8M | 14.8M | 15.5M | |
| Year 6 | 0.3M | 1.2M | 4.0M | 8.2M | 0.2M | 31.8M | 13.7M | 11.7M | |
| TOTAL | 49.2M | 52.5M | 69.5M | 70.9M | 55.7M | 209.5M | 119.2M | 104.9M |
OK, let's round up the averages for those two groups and add Switch to the equation.
| GR1 | GR2 | GR1 | GR2 | ||
| Year 1 | 100% | 50% | 15.3M | 15.3M | |
| Year 2 | 90% | 90% | 13.9M | 25.6M | |
| Year 3 | 90% | 100% | 13.9M | 30.7M | |
| Year 4 | 70% | 90% | 11.8M | 25.6M | |
| Year 5 | 40% | 80% | 9.6M | 21.9M | |
| Year 6 | 20% | 60% | 8.5M | 17.0M | |
| TOTAL | 73.1M | 136.1M |
Based on that it's pretty much clear that if next year we see drop in sales, most likely, Switch's not going to be 100M seller (in first 6 years anyway).
So what do you guys think? In which group Switch is going to end up, or which curve is it going to follow?
Last edited by Kristof81 - on 05 April 2018
