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xMetroid on 16 January 2021
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dmillos said:
xMetroid said:

Really interesting. Switch didn't reach 30 millions but 28.3 is an incredible number. I feel like this year was pretty overwhelming that we didn't really realize but like only Wii and DS achieved such highs. Let's see how much it can stabilize in 2021. I feel like Jan + Feb should be up. Switch was out of stock pretty much all spring and summer last year and some weeks were pretty weak. So there is faith it could still catch up if Nintendo is aggressive enough. It will be very interesting.

If it can keep up with 2020, the Switch will enter DS/PS2 territory and would probably end higher than 145 millions.

Hi @xMetroid  You are absolutely right, it is easy to overlook such an incredible accomplishment for the Switch. It is true that the Wii beat the Switch this december, but Year 4 for the Wii was 19M compared to the 28.3M of the Switch. The best 12 consecutive months for the Wii was 24M. The best year of the PS2 seems to be 22M. While the best 12 months for the DS are 29.5M

There is a very slight chance that the Switch could outsell the past January and February by 1.2M in order to tie the DS (it would need 3.8M units in two months)

The Gap charts with the Wii are very interesting as well:

During all of the past 9 months the NS just blasted upwards, this December seems to me like the Last hurrah for the Wii, the final battle that they just put everything they got in order to try and survive. But after this, I find it hard to think that the Wii will have many months that it can outsell the NS. Maybe January (1.5M) but not much more after that. 

Here are the Year 4 and 5:

As you can see, the NS beat Wii every month except this last one. But then when Year 5 comes around I don't see any reason to think that the NS will sell so little as to be beaten by the Wii on any month. 

Bonus Question: What happened on this Year 4 Holiday for the Wii to go full on Hulk mode?

Oh you're right ! I thought for a second Wii in it's peak had a better year than the Switch in 2020 but yea it wasn't close even. So only the DS peaked higher in a 12 month period and not from that much. Thing is the DS got pretty much 2 years of peak, so let's hope Switch doesn't start declining too much this year. I think Switch will live longer than the DS, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't reach the same level as quickly. I really think if the Switch maintain it's sales this year, it will be able to surpass the DS. 

I also don't see the Switch dying down fast over the years since i only see positive stuff about the system online, aside from the joycon drift really. While the Wii was suffering a lot from it's casual family approach and them moving on to another new technology (kinect) other than remote motion control. Also the quick rise of HD TVs.. like the Wii had so much against it at the time, and i don't see anything like that affecting the Switch. It also doesn't have any competition in that market while Sony and MS tried to steal Wii's thunder with their own motion thing.