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Zippy6 said:
I think in the console market we've been shielded by how bad it is until now due to this being our first holiday after the pandemic without aging tech. GPU market has been a mess since May/June 2020, and now this November has been a real wakeup call. The Switch is managing for the most part to put out good numbers but the latest consoles that have large powerful chips are completely crippled. They can supply enough to have decent sales in general weeks, but they've had no opportunity to stockpile units or ramp up production for the holiday season, meaning it's almost like the holidays don't exist at all. The shipment numbers Sony give in just over a months time will be very important to see, how much they adjust their forecast by, and also in April what they forecast for 2022. It's sad to see console sales damaged by something other than appeal. A console posting low numbers because it's bad is one thing, but consoles posting sub 400k weeks in December because of an ongoing supply issue with no firm end in sight is very disheartening. |
I wonder if it would have been wise for Sony and MS to have delayed their 9th gen releases. A 2021-2022 release may not have helped with the next gen's numbers, but it wouldn't have killed the PS4/XBOne sales. And besides, most things are still releasing on both current and last gen, so there wouldn't be that much of a software issue.
The Switch has really won the lottery ticket by being based on somewhat aged hardware. I imagine Nintendo is going to continue the Switch's lifespan for as long as this chip drought remains.
