Global Hardware 15 December 2018

[Bofferbrauer2]

DonFerrari said:

OTBWY said:

The Switch is competing directly with the PS4. That's a fact. I don't know what you even mean with "another market" as they are in the same market. Video game entertainment.

Nope, it isn't. If a competitor entering the market doesn't shift your sales (and PS4 had it's best year when Switch launched, and this year is like 2nd or 3rd best with the decline being natural for the age of the console and hitting peak last year) then it isn't a direct competitor.

If Xbox wasn't on the market (mainly USA and UK) PS4 sales would have been considerably higher.

Come next gen and if Switch 2 eat away market from PS5 or X4 then you can claim this.

Xbox 360 launched a year before the PS3, but the 360 sales in the first full year after the PS3 launch went up also, so by your own conclusion Playstation isn't competing with Xbox either. Nobody is competing with nobody, folks, just got the proof here!

It doesn't matter if a console makes record sales the year a competitor launches, they still share the same market. Most probably even more would have bought a PS4 by now if the Switch hadn't launched, so Switch is giving some competition and share the same market. What they don't share is the same angle unlike the Xbox One. Even apart from the portability, Games on the Switch tend to be different to those on the PS4, which allows for some cohabitation between the two (hence why Nintendo is often called a "secondary" console) - but someone who wants to buy a console still has to decide which one they want to buy between those available. And when someone has both a Switch and another console, they have to decide for which platform they'll buy games.

Also, just look here on the forums and you'll find plenty of threads and posts of people who prefer some game on a platform over another - and most of the recent ones are about Switch version instead of PS4 or XBO. That alone shows that they are all in on the same market and compete all with each other. Also how many posts and threads are there from people who bought a Switch and then their former main console suddly became mostly a dust collector? I don't know, but there were plenty in the last year and a half.