Switch Sales Predictions: Open Your Eyes - UPDATE: Switch LTD Shipments Reach 111.08m by June 30th, Forecast for Current Fiscal Year Remains at 21.0m

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Kai_Mao said:

Let me just say that it’s incredible that Switch reached the 100+ million milestone not only at such a rate but without any of the notable games:

- Call of Duty
- Battlefield
- GTA
- Madden

Even the FIFA games the Switch gets are far cry versions compared to the PS4/5/Xbone/Xbox Series versions.

I just point these particular games out because they are the usual multiplat games that have mainstream appeal and sell millions on every entry. GTA is a sales juggernaut especially with GTA V still selling almost a decade after its initial release on PS3/Xbox 360.

The Wii, DS, 3DS, and even the Wii U had games from at least one or two of these series. The DS even had an original GTA game called Chinatown Wars.

I’m sure the developers of these respective series probably don’t care at the moment as they’re getting their money from the other platforms. They probably don’t care much for the potential from the 100+ million Switch user base. But it is interesting to point out.

The selling power of these big third party franchises can be misleading.  They actually are not nearly as good at selling a console as Nintendo's best first party software.  These games are released on multiple platforms, while Nintendo's games are released on a single platform.  You have to be careful when comparing a multiplatform game with a single platform game.  A game that sells 30m+ makes a whole lot of cash for the developer, but that doesn't mean it is selling Playstation hardware like a 30m+ game would sell Nintendo hardware.

For example, take Call of Duty: Black Ops.  (I found some conflicting data on this game, so I am just going to provide some estimates to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.)  If this game sold 31m units, then the platform breakdown is something like XBox360 (15m), PS3 (13m), PC and other platforms (3m).  The best selling platform is only 15m.  However, Switch currently has 7 games that have sold 18m+.  As impressive as CoD: Black Ops is, it just doesn't have the system selling power of the top 7 Switch games.  All of those CoD sales are split across multiple platforms.

Third party games can be misleading in their system selling power, because we usually don't get a split of how much each game sold per platform.  The best we can do is often do paper napkin math where we estimate which platform got what percentage of sales and try to figure out how much each game sold by platform.  But even in doing this, it's fairly reasonable to conclude that first party software does a significant role in selling even Playstation and XBox hardware.  For example, God of War has sold around 20m copies on the PS4 alone.  That actually puts its PS4-only sales above every third party game except GTA5.  

Now think about Nintendo first party sales.  BotW and Smash Bros are heading toward 30m+, Animal Crossing 40m+, and Mario Kart 8 50m+ at least.  Even God of War pales in comparison to this, and third party sales stack up even worse than GoW when you split them up into individual platforms.  In the end, the software that is best at selling hardware is actually the top Nintendo first party software.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 09 August 2022