Will the Switch's successor outsell the original Switch?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

zorg1000 said:

Since the pandemic boost has been mentioned quite a bit, what do you guys think Switch sales would currently be without it?

It would be essentially the same.  What happened is that Switch did get a boost of a few million in 2020, but these sales would have happened eventually anyway, just in later years.  My evidence comes from both Animal Crossing sales and South Korea sales.

Switch hardware is not the only thing that got a sales bump during COVID.  Animal Crossing: New Horizons also got a big sales bump.  However, previous Animal Crossing games tend to sell differently.  They tend to have very strong legs without being frontloaded the first year.  New Horizons has decent legs, but not in comparison to the amazing sales that it got in 2020.  Usually an Animal Crossing game will have better legs in comparison to first year sales.

However, South Korea is different.  South Korea did not have serious lockdowns like the rest of the world.  They had suffered other pandemics prior to COVID, and so they were prepared for COVID and did not have serious lockdowns like the rest of the world did in 2020.  When you look at the South Korea sales charts, you will find that Animal Crossing: New Horizons had very good legs, often appearing in the weekly top 5 in both 2021 and 2022.  In South Korea, New Horizons sold more like previous Animal Crossing games with stronger legs in later years compared to sales in the first year.

So, what I am saying is that Animal Crossing: New Horizons would have sold around the same amount, lifetime, regardless of COVID.  What COVID did to New Horizons is that it sold more games in 2020 and less in later years, but without COVID lifetime sales would have been about the same.  Similarly, Switch got a bump in 2020, but these sales would have happened anyway.  There was simply more Switch sales in 2020 at the expense of sales in later years.