June NPD 2020

[Agente42]

noshten said:

Shadow1980 said:

Since that's the best we're going to have for now, I'll plug in the Era estimates into my data set.

And now, chart time!

If and when we get better data, I will update all the data points.

Anywho, not much to say. The COVID-19 bubble obviously popped for the PS4 & XBO after April. Barring any significant margins or error with the Era estimates, and they are back to being down from the same months last year. Meanwhile, with the Switch the bubble hasn't so much popped as it has slowly deflated. It's still up YoY, but not by nearly as much as before (~56%, compared to 145% in May and 256% in April), and in terms of weekly averages is down ~22.6% from May. Assuming continued declines in both YoY increases and weekly averages, then at this rate the Switch will be flat or down YoY by August (though in YTD terms it will still be up significantly from 2019). It could settle back down to a baseline on par or slightly higher than last year, but given where it was and how it was trending YoY-wise prior to the outbreak I doubt we will see significant YoY increases for much longer. July could very well be the last month for that. I like seeing the Switch do well so I hope I'm wrong, but my honest prediction is that nearly all of the YoY increases for the Switch this year will have been from the COVID bump. It should end the year at somewhere around 7M in the U.S., bringing its LTD total to around 17.5M.

Looking at the monthly averages in Japan, its more about supply than COVID bubble deflating demand for the Switch and the same could be said of Sony in the West. 

Simply put all console manufacturers weren't ready to expand production to fully realize the amount of supply they would need around COVID. 

I'd be surprised when seeing the data in Japan in July if Switch isn't up significantly in the West once the supply is stable. It seems Nintendo has been able to scale up production with the diversification of its vendors in Vietnam where it's likely they are producing the Switch Lite. You can go to Amazon.com right now and again you would notice that it's sold out and selling for $399 through resellers - this talks about demand still not being met and it's a similar situation elsewhere. Switch is sold as soon as it arrives and Nintendo is selling whatever they could ship. Even in a Sony dominated market like the UK units are selling for £350 through resellers, in France, Germany, Spain the cheapest copy from resellers is around 369 euro. 

Currently, I believe that the only places that have anywhere near enough stock to meet demand are those closes to their supply chain.. so Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the rest of Asia. The major growth we would be seeing during the summer would come from this region. While I think supply would probably normalize in the West around August/September. 

The peak, the major driven sales, is Animal Crossing. COVID helps, but the true system sellers are Animal Crossing not COVID. Animal Crossing always a big hit, but the potential scope grows. The hybrid system with good games brought appreciation to Nintendo franchises. In this system, games sell more for longer because they reinforce Nintendo's sales policy.