Will the Switch have the greatest selling console calendar year of all time?

[Pyro as Bill]

wohufana said:

Soundwave said:

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".

UK isn't in a recession and I doubt most of Europe is now.

We WERE in recession but the stats are delayed such that by the time they released, other stats already showed we were out of the recession.

Recessions seem to benefit the cheaper forms of entertainment anyway at the cost of more expensive forms. Humans are human and even the unemployed value entertainment.