According to Mat Piscatella "Next Gen consoles sales will not have a major effect on Switch sales"

[The_Liquid_Laser]

zorg1000 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

It's normal for a console to increase in sales in it's second year after release.  PS2 sales peaked in 2002.  Both Gamecube and XBox sales were significantly up YoY in 2002 as well.  It's not the percentage increase that matters.  It's absolute sales.  

Your argument would say that PS2 was not competing against Gamecube or XBox because they all had YoY increases at the same time. (Clearly this is a nonsense argument.)  My argument says that Wii was dominating PS3 and XBox360 in 2008 just like PS2 was dominating the other two consoles in 2002.

The Wii, during its first few years, was selling just like every dominant console sells, and it's competitors were selling much lower as second and third place consoles usually do.  The difference is that after a few years the Wii sales dramatically increased.  When that happened the other two consoles got a sales boost.  That is competition.  That is how competition works.  High sales of one console correlates with lower sales in another and vice versa.

Are you not aware of when GC/XB released? They launched in holiday 2001 so 2002 was their first year.

Again, you are confusing correlation with causation. 360 was far outpacing its predecessor so it makes no sense to say Wii was affecting its sales. PS3 launched at $599 and took a few years to get down to mass market price.

PS/XB consoles are direct competitors, they compete primarily for the 13-35 year old male that plays shooter, sports, racing, action games and they go back and forth trying to one up each other with online services and multimedia functions.

PS2 (157m)+XB (25m)=182 million

PS3 (77m)+360 (76m)=173 million

PS4 (~125m)+XBO (~50m)=175 million

For three generations, spanning ~20 years, these two have been fighting over basically the same subset of gamers and their sales rise/fall depending on the other.

Wii & Nintendo consoles in general play almost no part in PS/XB sales.

"Are you not aware of when GC/XB released? They launched in holiday 2001 so 2002 was their first year."

This is a good argument.  In fact, I like it so much that I basically made the same argument for Generation 7.  "It's normal for a console to increase in sales in it's second year after release."  You are arguing against me in Generation 7, but you are using my same type of reasoning for Generation 6.  Well, I like what you are saying about Generation 6.  I wish you would listen to your own argument and apply it to Generation 7.

Shadow1980 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Normally you seem to know what you are talking about, but these statements I bolded make it seem like you don't believe in competition.  Don't you think any of the consoles are competing with one another?  Why did the SNES sell less than the NES.  Could it be that they bought a Genesis/Megadrive instead?  Why did the PS3 sell less than the PS2?  Is it just a coincidence that the XBox brand sold better in Generation 7 while the Playstation brand sold worse?

I mean, think about what you are actually saying.  These consoles are actually competing.  If one company makes a misstep, that doesn't mean most people just stop playing video games.  They buy a competing console instead.

The release of one system from another brand has never had any impact on sales of a console from another brand, either from the same generation (for offset releases) or from a previous generation.

The evidence for this claim is strongest for cross-generation cases. Despite Sega claiming to do "What Nintendon't," the release of the Genesis had no effect on NES sales. The release of the PS1 had no effect on SNES sales. The release of the Dreamcast had no effect on PS1 sales. The release of the 360 had no effect on PS2 sales.

Even within generations, there' strong evidence that a console's sales curve does not experience a sudden decline upon the release of another system later on. The available data we have on 16-bit consoles shows that the Genesis experienced significant growth in the U.S. even after the release of the SNES. The PS1 experienced sales growth despite the release of the N64. The release of the PS2 had no effect on Dreamcast sales, which were actually up for most of 2001. The launch of the GameCube and Xbox had no impact on PS2 sales, which were very strong in the 2001 holidays and were up a good bit in Q1 2002. And the Switch had no effect on PS4 or XBO sales.

With the 360 there is weak evidence that the release of the PS3 may have hurt it some as it was down for the April-July period of 2007, but that is the only instance I can find of a console experiencing any kind of significant drop in sales from the release of a same-gen competitor within one year of said competitor's launch, and given that it's the lone example it could just as easily be that the decline could have been due to other factors. In fact, it is worth pointing out that the 360 had supply issues for its first few months that depressed Q1 2006 sales, but the issues were resolved by April that year, which produced an unusually strong Q2 (the second quarter is usually the weakest of the year). Oh, and the 360's explosive growth in 2010 was due to the release of the 360 S, not the decline of the Wii. The delayed peak of it and the PS3 can be explained by factors specific to those two systems, without needing to invoke the Wii.

There is absolutely no reason to expect that the PS5 and XSX will have any effect on Switch sales. The console market is not a zero-sum game, especially when it comes to Nintendo vs. PS & Xbox. This is not to say that competition has zero effect on sales. It does, at least when two consoles are offering very similar or nearly identical experiences. But there is no evidence that the release of a system from one brand has an immediate and negative impact on the sales of a system that has already been on the market for a good while if it is from another brand.

I certainly don't think that sales nosedive the week after a competitor launches.  Competition doesn't mean that one system immediately "falls off a cliff" as soon as a competitor releases.  The effects of competition are not immediate.

But if you look over the course of a whole generation, yes there is definitely evidence of competition.  I'm kind of surprised anyone would say the opposite.  Here is a fairly straightforward example.  North America console sales of Generation 3 and 4 look like this

NA Console sales (in millions), Generations 3 & 4

	Nintendo	Sega	Total
Generation 3	33	2	35
Generation 4	23	17	40

Sales went down for Nintendo going from Generation 3 to 4.  Sales went up for Sega.  When you account for population growth the total sales for both generations is almost the same.  Customers were leaving Nintendo and going to Sega.  That is competition.  I really don't see how anyone could say that it isn't competition.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 06 January 2020