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Norion on 12 February 2021
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Shadow1980 said:
Norion said:

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.

@Bolded. In the U.S. & Japan, maybe. In Europe... not so much. Let's say the Switch ends up at around 45M in the U.S. and about 28-29M (halfway between the DS and 3DS) in Japan. In just those two countries, that would give the Switch a surplus over the PS4 of around 28M, ±0.5M. That's definitely a lot. However, the Switch has been tracking well behind the PS4 in Europe. While the PS4 is on track to sell over 50M units in Europe, not too much less than what the DS & PS2 sold, the Switch is going to fall well short of that. Assuming Europe stays about proportional to Japan, Switch sales in the region could end at around 30-32M. That would be a roughly 20M deficit against the PS4 in the region. If the Switch's U.S.+JP surplus is 28M, that Europe deficit would result in a net surplus of only around 8M. If rest-of-world sales for the Switch fall a few million units short of the Switch, that could negate even more of that US+JP surplus.

So, 125-130M is definitely possible, and is what I'm going with for right now. I could totally see NA/JP/Europe/RoW regional split of, say, 50M/28M/32M/15M. The lower end of the 120M range would be a worst-case scenario, and I don't see the Switch failing to at least match the PS4 globally (within a <2% margin), but I don't see it blowing away the PS4 by 20M+, either.

Europe is the Switch's weakest major region though it is now tracking ahead of the PS3 there by a decent bit so it only doing low 30's there is very unlikely I think and it's already at 10M in RoW and is really picking up lately with it having sold over 5M last year so it should be at least 13M by the end of this year so it's pretty much guaranteed it gets past 15M. 125-130 is on the low side in my view but it's an acceptable estimate. My main issue was you saying a projection below 120-130 was pessimistic since there's no chance it ends up in the 110's at this point but you say low 120's is the worst-case scenario so I'm guessing you've moved your worst-case up somewhat. I do think low 130's is a more realistic worst-case scenario but low 120's isn't that much lower so nothing really wrong with thinking that's the worst-case. As long as a worse-case projection has it getting to the 120's it's fine.