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

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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.

Switch is already ahead of the DS in Japan. There's really no point in looking at sell-through numbers when we have access to the more accurate shipped numbers. Eventually every shipped unit will be a sold through unit.

Here are the figures for Nintendo's final breakdown of DS shipments by region, totaling to 153.99m. The DS shipped a miniscule amount after this final breakdown, bringing its final lifetime figure to 154.02m. Switch LTD shipments are as of December 31st 2023, totaling 139.36m.

Japan: DS 32.99m vs. Switch 33.34m
Americas: DS 59.93m vs. Switch 53.85m
Other: DS 61.07m vs. Switch 52.18m

The fact that both Paper Mario and Luigi's Mansion 2 get released in the first half of 2024 (earlier than pretty much everyone expected) points in the direction of Nintendo having plenty of other first party games left to be released on Switch. Plus one big title (Pokémon Legends) is already confirmed for 2025. We have these facts, but you'd rather form your expectations based on vague assumptions. I guess you are entitled to do that, but it's definitely not the best analytical approach.

Switch doesn't need to beat the DS in the USA when it can beat the DS in the whole of America (only ~6m to go, not that big of a challenge). Nintendo's better distribution by country of today can have certainly impacted the amount of units that were sold in the USA and then exported to another American country afterwards. In a similar way, better worldwide availability of Switch than what the DS had will allow Switch to make up for lower lifetime sales in Europe.

Given the currently available facts, I'd put the chance of Switch passing the DS at a full 100% and passing the PS2 at 75%. Most of the doubt regarding the PS2 comes from the lack of a final lifetime figure on Sony's behalf, so read these 75% as the probability that it will be widely acknowledged that Switch beat the PS2.