PlayStation/Xbox/Switch Hardware Battle: 2021 Edition: FINAL RESULTS!

[PAOerfulone]

Week 1 Breakdown:

'21 PS4: Down in all regions
'21 XOne: Down in all regions
'21 PS5 - Up in Japan; Down in the United States, Europe, and Rest of the World; Down overall
'21 XSXS - Up in Japan; Down in the United States, Europe, and Rest of the World; Down overall.
'21 NSW - Up in the United States, Europe, and Rest of the World; Down in Japan; Down overall.

And here we go!!
Week 1 of the 2021 Hardware Comparison is officially in the books, and with this new format we can actually see how all the PlayStation and Xbox consoles are doing in comparison to the previous gen counterparts AND..... We're off to a bad start...

The '21 PS4/XOne got smacked by the '14 PS3/360. Now, there's a chance it could be just limited stock and that they'll constantly sell around these levels for most of the year, while the PS3 and 360 gradually decline as we progress. But I wouldn't bet money on that happening. If the traditional post holiday, post successor launch trends continue to hold, then this is going to be a very long year for the PS4 and Xbox One.

And their next gen counterparts aren't fairing much better. Even with severe shortages and stock issues, the '21 PS5/XSXS failed to match the '14 PS4/XOne numbers in Week 1. Keep in mind that in 2014, while the Xbox One didn't experience any notable stock issues that I can recall, the PS4 most certainly did. And it took months for Sony to catch up with demand, and with Covid this time around, it's going to take even longer for both Sony and Microsoft to catch up. But the fact that even with the shortages, shipments for the PS5 and XSXS are lower than they were for the PS4 and Xbox One, tells me that Sony and Microsoft were expecting both systems to perform worse post-launch than the PS4 and Xbox One did post launch. That doesn't exactly exude confidence if you ask me.

Now we have the Nintendo Switch, the only traditional Year over Year comparison on this thread. In Week 1, 2021 starts it just a little bit behind 2020 worldwide. The reason for this is because Japan is notably down compared to last year, while the US, Europe, and Rest of the World were slightly up. But the big disadvantage in Japan was too big for the other regions to overcome, hence why it was slightly down overall. That shouldn't be an issue for Week 2 with Famitsu reporting a slight increase in Japan this week, whereas last year it dropped considerably. So next week should be an overall win for the Switch in Week 2.