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Norion on 22 February 2021
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Shadow1980 said:
Norion said:

Both ran out of stock and both Sony and Microsoft felt it was more important to focus on manufacturing the new consoles than keeping up with the new increased demand for the old ones. Also the Switch was in the peak of its life while the other two were near the end and declining so the former had a much bigger boost potential since a lot of people who have bought a Switch during the pandemic will have already had a PS4 or Xbox One and a lot of people who had none of them probably picked the Switch over the other two since it was more appealing to them, for example a lot of the women who bought a Switch.

Pretty much this. It was the replacement year for the PS4 & XBO. There was only so much stock to go around. For example, Sony only shipped 6.2M units during the 2020 calendar year, with maybe a third of those going to North America. Combined with remaining stock from 2019, there was no way it could have continued selling what it was doing in the spring and summer for the whole year. Even without the pandemic, it still would have probably sold about the same as it did for 2020 as a whole (somewhere in the 2.1-2.3M range; we're still missing Nov.+Dec. NPD sales for last-gen). If Sony had doubled their PS4 output, they might have been able to sell upwards of 3.5M or more, but there was no point in doing so with the PS5 on the horizon.

As usual good post and analysis. I have said that all that covid did for the PS4 and Xbox One was move 2020 sales around instead of giving them a real boost since both sold more in the March-May period than the October-December period I think which is insane and likely unprecedented. With Sony and Microsoft sacrificing manufacturing of the old systems to help the new ones covid probably actually has decreased sales for the last gen systems in the long term so aside from it messing up their plans Nintendo got very lucky with the timing of this pandemic.

VAMatt said:
Norion said:

Both ran out of stock and both Sony and Microsoft felt it was more important to focus on manufacturing the new consoles than keeping up with the new increased demand for the old ones. Also the Switch was in the peak of its life while the other two were near the end and declining so the former had a much bigger boost potential since a lot of people who have bought a Switch during the pandemic will have already had a PS4 or Xbox One and a lot of people who had none of them probably picked the Switch over the other two since it was more appealing to them, for example a lot of the women who bought a Switch.

Also, a greater share of Switch units are sold to/for kids.  With everyone stuck at home, parents are happy to buy the kids a Switch to give them something to do that (this is important) doesn't require a TV.  No kids fighting over the XB/PS and TV if they each have a Switch.  No parents having to listen to kids gaminh while they're working from home if they can tell the kid to go play Switch in his room.  

Add this to the consoles lifecycles, and Switch was just in a much better position to gain market share during the pandemic.  

That's another good point. The Wii U had that sort of thing but the connection range wasn't that big so the Switch took that advantage and made it better and got rid of the massive disadvantages that prevented the Wii U from being successful.