PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch Sales Drop - Global Hardware May 1-7

[Kakadu18]

RolStoppable said:

Chicho said:

From that article

"Ampere is currently forecasting a next-gen Nintendo device to release in 2024," he said. "By the end of that year Switch is predicted to have sold through 146m units meaning it still has the potential to become the best-selling console ever by the end of its lifetime, selling over 158 million units and overtaking the PlayStation 2."

So Switch 2 in 2024 confirmed and Switch 1 best selling video game console of all times confirmed?

Ignoring what I assume to be sarcastic questions, the maths of Ampere is just bad.

Switch had sold through ~102m by the end of 2021 and 2022 can be expected to achieve at least 21m, resulting in an LTD of ~123m by the end of 2022. From there we have to distribute a total of 23m across 2023 and 2024.

If we applied consistent yearly drops, we would be looking at ~15m in 2023 and ~8m in 2024. Such a drop in momentum doesn't make it feasible to end up with 158m+ lifetime.

If we used a less severe drop for 2023 and had, say ~17m, we would then get only ~6m in 2024. That would be even worse momentum than in the example above.

Going in the other direction of granting 2023 only ~13m and then 2024 ~10m would allow 2024 to end on a high enough level to possibly leg it out to 158m+ lifetime, but we'd then have to ask why 2023 would have such a sharp drop and how 2024 could slow down the severe decline by so much.

Any way you look at it, it just doesn't work out to a realistic sales curve.

I've gone through a similar line of thought when I first read that article a while back. Doesn't really add up.