RolStoppable said:
| Farsala said: Also begs the question of how many Switch have been sent to China over the years? |
An analyst firm had estimated 4m in China, including the grey market, when official Switch shipments had crossed 1m not too long before that. IIRC, this estimate was LTD at the end of 2021. So 2.5m+ consoles imported to China over the years, the lion share of which should have been first bought in Japan. How accurate this estimate is is anybody's guess, but at least we know that it took a few years before Switch officially launched in China, so imports outpacing official shipments isn't farfetched. 2.5m+ might still be too much of a stretch though. Otter said:
Hmm, im not buying the explanations of Xbox's numbers. I think there is likely natural growth but not to the extent where its selling 12k in a random week
I think people are really overestimating the appeal of gamepass. Xbox is essentially seeing more than a 1000× increase in interest with a console which apparently has no games that appeal to the market, with supposed increased competition from PC. I don't believe people are buying it to play popular free to play games they already have on PS4.
Maybe series S has some magic appeal but when when stock is available for the X it also does especially well. The ready availability of Xbox series in thr UK for example shows that growth of the Xbox brand ascend in Japan is unlike any other market.
It could be that that lack of PS5 stock is driving people towards alternatives but again this dynamic isn't being seeing as strongly in other major markets (as seen by available series stock elsewhere ). Secondly even in weeks with good PS5 stock were seeing massive Series numbers. This would imply that there is a big appetite for PS5/Series in Japan, more so than there was for PS4...
When combined with the PS5 hardware situation (poor attach ratio), it seems more likely that international scalping is driving the growth.
A good metric to get might be the sales of Series Accessories in the Japanese market/their ranking on amazon. |
Scalping is certainly the main driver for the Xbox sales we are seeing in Japan. |
How exactly do you guys think that scalping works?
