Will Switch outsell DS? PS2? Or Neither? (March 2024 Update Poll)

[Shtinamin_]

Shadow1980 said:

It's still running a huge and insurmountable deficit against the DS in the U.S., and a far bigger one in Europe. It is on the verge of exceeding the DS in Japan (only 600k away), and should beat it by at least a million, but that's not enough by itself to make up for deficits in the other two major markets. It's going to depend on the rest of the world making up for those deficits in NA & Europe. It's also going to depend on if Nintendo cares if the Switch drops off a cliff after the Switch 2 releases. Given their past approaches to systems with an actual successor, I have my doubts that they will be anywhere near proactive enough to keep the Switch from having massive declines.

Passing the DS worldwide is still within the realm of possibility, but it's probably going to be very close regardless. The PS2 sold at least 5 million units more than the DS, so that's going to be an even tougher goal for the Switch to reach. Reaching 150M before it's discontinued is guaranteed, and it could possibly even hit that mark by time the Switch 2 releases. But this late in the system's life with a successor due out in a year and sales in rapid decline, squeezing another 14M out will be difficult but not impossible, but another 20M+ is going to be highly unlikely. So, passing the DS is a "maybe" and passing the PS2 is a "probably not." If the Switch 2 released this year, I would have said absolutely no to it passing either.

I agree that the EU is "full" on Nintendo Switch. But given how from 2022-2023 we saw a -10.28% decline, I expect around a -25% decline giving EU another 3.33M units sold by Dec 2024. Bringing their total to ~38.54M.

NA still has some gas in it. (Im going to be focusing on USA due to the USA having the greater share of units sold in NA). From 2022-2023 we saw a -16.81% decline, so we should expect a -25% decline this year, giving the USA another 3.64M units sold by Dec 2024. Bringing the USA total to ~47.93M (up from their 44.75M right now, NA total is 49.23M). We can add an extra 1M (maybe) for Canada and México. 53.41M (since NA total right now is at 49.23M).

Japan still has lots of gas to go and is cooking. Japan from 2022-2023 had a -15.91% decline. So we can expect around a -25% decline giving Japan another 2.96M units sold by Dec 2024. Bringing their total to 35.46M.

If we go global, from 2022-2023 we saw a -14% decline. We will expect a -25% decline for consistency giving the Switch another 12.29M units by Dec 2024. Bringing the total to 148.55M. But this will only give Other 1.36M sold from Jan 2024-Dec 2024, it has already sold 295k from Jan-Feb. I suspect Other to start increasing in sales this year and especially in 2025. I suspect Other to sell 1.81M total from Jan to Dec. (I don't recall the data for Other, so this estimate isn't grounded in anything). Having a total of 12.74M sold from Jan to Dec 2024.

I think NA, Japan and Other are gonna continue to carry the Switch, especially from what we see in Jan and Feb % for NA, EU and JP, -9.3% & -21.6%, -27.7% & -21.7%, -9.9% & -7.6% respectively.
Based on this technically Japan is on track to have a -15% decline at the most by Dec 2024, but we can do the math for that later down the year.