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| Shadow1980 said: First off, I actually was given grief by some people for suggesting the pandemic was the primary driver of the Switch's sales growth in 2020. I had at least a couple of people try to flat out deny that fact outright and state that Animal Crossing was the primary driver. What little evidence that was offered failed to establish that AC was the primary driver, and all their commentary just came across as a post hoc means of rationalizing away the pandemic's effects, presumably because the existence of the "COVID bump" made it seem like the Switch somehow didn't "earn" its sales in 2020 on its own merits. Most serious commentators and analysts agree that COVID was the primary driver of increased demand last year, and it seems the only people insisting on arguing otherwise were random "platform partisans" on the internet who don't like the idea of seeing an asterisk next to the record of their favorite systems. And I haven't even touched on Japan and Europe yet. The Switch is currently running an absolutely massive deficit against the DS in Japan, and it's unlikely to make up for it as it will have to have post-Year 4 sales far, far beyond any other system in history in that country (over 14.6M from now onward, to be exact; the current record is only about half that). In Europe, the Switch isn't even close to the halfway point of what the DS and PS2 sold. For the Switch to even have a chance at matching the DS globally or even in any specific region it will need to both A) benefit from a protracted recovery from the pandemic, and B) require that Nintendo support it in late life as well as Sony does their systems. Anything short of that I think will result in it failing to be a legitimate contender for the new #1 spot, and even if both things happen the Switch could still fall well short of the DS. Beating the 360 & PS2 in U.S. is within the realm of possibility. Beating the DS in any one of the major markets or the PS2 globally is not. The idea that the Switch has a realistic shot at beating the DS is beyond reasonable optimism, and assumes future sales that are well beyond the norm based on an assumption of long-term continuation of last year's sales figures, even though those were dependent on circumstances that were most definitely not normal. 120-130M globally seems to the be the most likely final lifetime total globally, with an NA/JP/EU/ROW split of 40%/22%/23%/15%. Anything above this I would consider to be "optimistic" while anything below it I would consider to be "pessimistic." But that's just me. |
While I agree that covid was probably the bigger factor for the Switch being up so much last year I do think your Switch sales projection is unrealistically low. The PS4 will end up at around 120M and the Switch is now tracking ahead of it significantly and it'll be at around 100M by the end of this year so there would need to be unrealistically high drops in the following years for sales to land in the 120's. Assuming 2020 is the peak year the switch could have drops like the Wii did and still make it to the 130's so based on that 120-130M is a pretty unrealistic middle range I'd say and 130-140 is a realistic minimum one. For Japan it is looking like the Switch will have a sales curve with high post-year 4 sales so if it doesn't beat the DS making it to 30M and getting fairly close is likely I think.
