Shadow1980 said:
I think that second sentence is the pertinent part. While the Switch was initially doing about on par with the PS4 globally (a coincidence, as the differences in regional sales ended up just happening to produce that result), Nintendo systems have averaged shorter life cycles than PS & Xbox systems have since Gen 7 (the Famicom and Game Boy being the only notable exceptions), and they always had a tendency to decline quickly once they passed their peak. Prior to you-know-what, most people were already thinking the Switch was likely to decline in 2020. So, even if both systems had a similar starting point, it would have been reasonable to think later-life sales would have favored the PS4. And as mentioned, when comparing the Switch strictly to other Nintendo systems to make for more apt comparisons, it was selling at or slightly above 3DS levels at its start, and below Wii levels in North America and Europe. So 100M may not have been an implausible estimate to make in mid-2017, but it would likely have been considered very optimistic, though conversely 70M seemed like a good estimate for the floor. As time passed, though, 100M seemed more and more plausible. Looking back at some of my other past predictions, in early 2020 before Germy McGee's Sales Jamboree, I was thinking that the Switch would have a lifetime worldwide sales total at or slightly above the Wii's. |
Yeah, that is why I said plausible, 70M-100M seems like a good corridor for predictions at that time. But we were at this point clearly way ahead of WiiU. And that is the point: I think after the WiiU many people (myself included) tended to view Switch sales perspective more pessimistic, even though the first data showed much better momentum. Nintendo lost trust in their abilities to sell a system with the WiiU. So many tended to see things more pessimistic.
