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LethalP on 27 May 2018
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Bofferbrauer2 said:
LethalP said:

There's no guarantee the Switch will sell more software than the Xbox One. The Switch won't have anywhere close the same attach rates as the Xbox, which has the best attach rates of any consoles other than PlayStation. Handhelds don't in general. Look at the Gameboy at 118 million hardware units, it sold 501 million software. The NES also sold 501 million software, but inside 61 million hardware units. It had nearly double the attach rate.

The Xbox will sell 500 million physical units in the end probably. The ps4 will do about 1.2-1.4 billion. Switch about 450 million. (if it sells above 90 million which is likely). 

You're giving the Switch the attach rate of a handheld like DS or PSP with just 5 games per system. However, Switch is largely tracking far ahead of the handhelds when it comes to attach rate. In fact, the attach rate is much closer to the one of the PS4 than it is to any handheld. After 63 weeks, Switch has an attach rate of 3.23, compared to 3.84 for the PS4 and between 2.00 (DS) and 2.36 (Vita) for the handhelds. While it tracks relatively low for home consoles, it still tracks far above any handheld.

Outside of such weeks where a big release comes out on the XBO, Switch is already outpacing the XBO in software sales despite only having about half the install base. I think 450M is way too low a target for Switch software sales. The 900M of the Wii are probably more the target of Nintendo in terms of software sales, and I think 700M is very achievable.

I don't think the XBO can sell 500M physical games anymore. After almost 5 years not only the XBO still hasn't reached half of that target, but also the software sales seems to be slowing down. Software sales were down a whopping 18% last year compared to 2016 and this so far year it's looking like it's going down yet again despite the increase in hardware sales.

Why did Switch sell more software and had a better tie ratio in it's first year than the 3DS? Was it because it's a Hybrid? Or was it because it got more significant releases in it's first year? Do you think PS and Xbox have higher tie ratios because they are home consoles? Or because they get the lions share of the games in the industry? I'd say the latter. The Switch should have a higher attach rate than the 3DS in the end, simply because it also gets Nintendo's home console franchises. And it's likely to have better support in general. So it all comes down to the amount of games.

This is where my whole thing about Switch and Xbox came up. They both did similar amounts in their first 13 months (X1 = 47 million and Switch = 50.9 million). But Xbox with 10 million units and Switch with 16 million units. The question is, what will Switch do in 2018 all together? Xbox One did 64 million in 2015, if Switch out does that in 2018 it will be in the lead. But saying the tie ratio of PS4 and Switch will end up being similar is crazy.

It all depends on what Switch ends up selling. If it does 80 million, then expect 450 million on VGChartz. If it does 120 million then expect 700+ million. But I also expect Xbox One to reach 450-500 million software sales too. About 300 million by 2019, 360 million by 2020. 400 million by the release of the next Xbox and it crawls to 500 million in the remainder of it's life. It might make it, it might not. But 60-70 million software sales is about what to expect for Xbox One in a year.