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I mean to illustrate, lets assume the Switch sells 21-22 mill this fiscal year and an even higher 23 million. And it even has pretty good holds after that. The DS is still pretty hard to catch.
Year 0 (should be noted DS had more time Nov 04-March 05, vs. March 17 for Switch)
Switch - 2.74m
DS - 5.27m
Year 1 (2017-18 for Switch)
Switch - 15.05m
DS - 11.46m
Year 2 (2018-19 for Switch) -
Switch - 16.95
DS - 23.56m
Year 3 (2019-20 for Switch) -
Switch - 22m guesstimate
DS - 30.13m
Year 4 (2020-21 for Switch) -
Switch - 23m guesstimate
DS - 31.18m
Year 5 (2021-22) -
Switch - 19m (guesstimate)
DS - 27m
Year 6 (2022-23) -
Switch - 14.5m (guesstimate)
DS - 17.52m
= Approx 113 mill for Switch
146 million for DS
Means Nintendo has to sell an extra 37-38 million in years 7 (2023-24), 8 (2024-25), and 9 (2025-26) to get to 150m. That's about 12 mill/year. The odds of Nintendo not having a Switch sucessor by 2024 at least are low too.
The DS having three years of 30m, 31m, and 27m is murderer's row, you're not likely to see a hardware platform ever do that again, so to make that up it means you have to ask a platform very late in its product cycle to perform very heavy lifting.
Now some miracle can happen like a new IP becoming the next Pokemon or something, but no one can really predict that. To beat/match the DS you really need to have a large lead over it in the early years, because realistically the Switch is not putting up three years of 30/31/27, no system can do that. That 27 is a real kick in the balls too, because it eats up a valuable 5th year for you to gain ground with, its not like they had two 30 mill years and then dropped down hard, 27m is I believe is still higher than the highest peak the Wii got to, lol.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 29 April 2020
