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wohufana on 15 August 2020
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Soundwave said:
wohufana said:

From a regional perspective, the Americas' labor market suffers the most. Recently, a New York Times article was titled  "7.7 million young people are unemployed." It also says "nearly 7.7 million American workers younger than 30 are now unemployed and three million dropped out of the labor force in the past month." 

Source https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-29/COVID-19-leads-to-dramatic-unemployment-young-people-suffer-the-most-QSUcPNPJ0Q/index.html

 

The so-called informal economy – whether migrant, agricultural, or shift workers in the developing world, or the gig workers and service-industry staff increasingly predominant in wealthier economies. The International Labor Organization found that COVID-19 had left almost all 2 billion of them finding it precariously hard to make ends meet.

Source https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2020/0506/No-jobs-so-what-future-Half-the-world-s-workforce-on-the-edge

The US unemployment rate has risen to 14.7%, with 20.5 million jobs lost in April, as the coronavirus pandemic devastated the economy.The rise means the jobless rate is now worse than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Source https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52591262

You cannot buy luxuries like consoles if you are unemployed. With these facts, I can say that consoles should have sold more if COVID-19 pandemic never happened. The increase in console sales is just minimal and therefore the 3 consoles should have sold more especially the Switch. Switch sales is simply a phenomenon, just admit it.

You're nuts if you think COVID19 hasn't had a large impact on consumer trends this year.

Netflix, Peloton (at home workout), Playstation all have seen record breaking revenue surges. Activision recorded their highest COD sales. Nintendo is in that group. Grocery stores are seeing record profit. Disney Plus subscriptions are way ahead of their targets.

Some businesses DO rise in a recession. When you can't go to Disneyworld like you promised the kids way back in January, a $200-$300 Switch looks awfully good to help ease their complaining. 

My neighbour's kids were driving him nuts at home all day, not even being able to see their school friends, so he bought them a Switch to save his sanity. They wanted that or a new Macbook, guess which option was a lot cheaper. The kids use it when they go on short weekend trips because they can't travel long distance this year. 

You're not taking any nuance into account by simply just looking at unemployment numbers. In general tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc) have done very well under COVID19 ... the Nasdaq stock index is higher now than it was in February, before all the shut downs. Largely because with nothing to do sitting at home, the demand for personal technology and entertainment is at a premium. 

Hundreds of millions of workers worldwide have lost their jobs, are on pay cuts, or are in floating status and currently not receiving any pay. US is in recession, UK and many EU nations are in recession. Developing and emerging console markets in Asia are in recession. If the pandemic never happened, don't you think a good percentage of these affected workers might have bought a console for them and/or their kids too? The people you mentioned are those who belong to upper class and those fortunate workers who are still employed and/or continue to receive compensation despite global situation. We might have seen even better sales for the 3 consoles especially the Switch which is the "hotcake" among the 3. So come on, just give credit the Switch truly deserve and not attribute it to the pandemic because what we are witnessing is a transformation of an underpowered and initially ridiculed toy into a beast.

We can debate till kingdom come but it certainly cannot lead us to a conclusion if Switch numbers are just artificial increase brought about by COVID-19 or it is just minimal because potential buyers out there were affected by COVID-19 too. We can only come up to a conclusion to our arguments if a research about the effects of the pandemic on the buying decisions of people on game consoles is done professionally to back up either of our claims. Otherwise the pandemic spike remains a "hearsay".