Predicting Switch sales

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Kristof81 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:
Interesting that the NES and GB sales curves were left off, but they are two of the more unusual ones. The Famicom launched to a slow start in 83, but by 85 was going strong in Japan. Then NES launched in one city only in 85, didn't reach a nationwide release until 87 and then peaked in the US in 89. Putting the two markets together it probably peaked in either year 5 or 6.

The original Gameboy has more of a roller coaster sales curve where it was high the first few years, dipped down a lot for a couple of years and then shot back up again. The first 6 years wouldn't really tell the whole story for the Gameboy.

Basically what I am saying is that unconventional sales curves can happen, especially when you recognize the console is operating under unusual circumstances. I believe the Switch is operating under unusual circumstances, so it won't clearly fit any of these sales curves. It will go down a little bit in its second year, but then really take off like the DS sales curve in later years. I don't think it will quite get as high as 200m+ in only 6 years (like the table suggests), but that is only because I don't think Nintendo will make that many consoles. Instead Switch will be supply constrained during years 3-5. The number of consoles they sell will be limited by the number of consoles they make.

I've left them out intentionally as they're both too extreme for any average calculations. They were on the market for donkey years and some of the other Nintendo systems were discontinued before these two reached their peaks, meaning I'd have go past year 10. Also both of them launched in the 80s, with little to no competition. On the top of it, it took almost 4 years for the NES to be available worldwide and Nintendo consolidated GameBoy and GameBoy Color figures, which reflected in absolut explosion of sales between years 10 and 12 (plus Pokemon in years 8-9), not only outliving NES, but also SNES and N64! I mean, I could do it, but I think we can all agree that the Switch won't be on the market for next 14 years and next GB "situation" is very unlikely to happen.

Edit: But hey ... for the sake of clarity:

	GB	NSW	NES	NSW
Year 1	22.5%	15.3M	18.2%	15.3M
Year 2	43.2%	19.3M	18.5%	15.4M
Year 3	56.0%	23.0M	36.3%	18.7M
Year 4	41.3%	18.9M	39.1%	19.4M
Year 5	39.4%	18.4M	64.0%	28.3M
Year 6	29.4%	16.5M	94.7%	65.4M
Year 7	22.3%	15.3M	100.0%	84.3M
Year 8	37.9%	18.1M	89.4%	53.3M
Year 9	58.6%	24.0M	62.8%	27.7M
Year 10	72.0%	30.3M	26.9%	16.8M
Year 11	91.2%	48.9M	8.6%	2.4M
Year 12	100.0%	68.0M	2.7%	0.5M
Year 13	24.9%	15.7M
Year 14	1.5%	1.1M
TOTAL		332.9M		347.4M

Thanks for including these.

(Referring to bold)  Both of these launched against no competition because they created their markets, but both NES and Gameboy had plenty of competitors during their lifetimes.  Being the market creator seemed to have given them some sort of huge advantage against competitors that lasted for one generation.

But overall, it is probably most useful to compare Switch to the "Iwata" consoles.  Iwata had major input on the design of 5 consoles: DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U and Switch.  Switch has a solid design and strategy like the DS and Wii did.  DS had a slow start, but it peaked so late largely because of massive 3rd party support.  Wii peaked a lot earlier, because it's 3rd party support was decent, but not nearly as good as DS third party support. 

So the real question is, what kind of third party support will the Switch have?  Looking at the type of 3rd party games already being ported to Switch, I think it is going to end up with some very impressive 3rd party support over its lifetime like the DS.  Devs are not really torn between making games for the core market vs. a new market that only likes party games and motion controls.  DS was considered an underpowered system, but it supported games that core gamers would like.  This makes the Switch very much like the DS.