July NPD 2020: Switch 340K, PS4 150K, XB1 17k (rip)

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Shadow1980 said:

curl-6 said:

We can't attribute Switch's sales solely to COVID-19 though, and ignore the colossal impact of Animal Crossing, which has basically become a cultural phenomenon and brought in huge swathes of new consumers to the platform.

As I and others said last year, it was and is a fundamental mistake to base Switch forecasts on the performance of past Nintendo systems as it is totally different from any of them.

I've been saying this for years as forecasts based on past systems have consistently underestimated the Switch.

Again:

Obviously, AC had a big impact in March. While there was probably somewhat of a pre-stimulus early-quarantine "better get it while the getting is good" rush (hence the uptick in PS4 & XBO sales in March after two months of big drops), the bulk of March's increases were clearly because of AC. April, however, showed a much, much smaller disparity in YoY changes. While AC likely had a residual effect in April (something at least a few major system-sellers have done in their second month), if the PS4 & XBO are any indication the bulk of the YoY increase in Switch sales in April was due to people getting their stimulus checks. While the YoY increases for the Switch tapered off more slowly than those of the PS4 & XBO, that could just as easily be chalked up to it being a younger, more popular, and thus better-stocked system. Once again, no game has ever had the kind of impact on hardware sales like what some are attributing to AC. Attributing something so unprecedented to a game while we are at the same time living in a time where we're dealing with something else unprecedented impacting the whole market is to me something that requires some damn good evidence. I've yet to see any good evidence that proves that the post-March boosts are primarily because of AC even though the PS4 & XBO had boosts that were clearly COVID-induced bumps. The Switch doesn't exist in a vacuum, and, especially given the nature of this year, has to be assessed in the broader context of the whole hardware market.

This chart actually shows that COVID was not the only factor in boosting Switch sales  YoY.  Why?  Because in July the COVID bump is over.  PS4 and XB1 are down YoY, but Switch is still up YoY.  You are only using US numbers, but the story is similar worldwide.  COVID is clearly over in most countries, but Switch is still up YoY.  That boost is not due to COVID alone.