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javi741 on 27 March 2024
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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.

At this point the Switch only having a "maybe" chance to outsell the DS is pretty pessimistic. At this point it's most likely that the Switch will surpass the DS. 

As stated before, the Switch doesn't need to outsell the DS in the U.S to outsell the DS globally. When it comes to total sales between the two in the entirety of the Americas, the gap between the DS & Switch is noticeably smaller than in U.S sales as it seems like the Switch is selling noticeably more in South America and other Latin American countries than the DS.

By March 2024 the Switch in the Americas should be at around 54.7M coming off a FY where the Switch sold around 5.8M. This would put the Switch only around 5M behind DS's total lifetime sales of 59.9M, assuming we predict a hard 40% drop next FY the Switch would be at around 58M units by March 2025, only 1-2M away. Even after Switch 2 comes out in March 2025 and slows Switch 1 sales quickly it should still be able to crawl slightly pass the DS's total of 59.93M in the Americas, Switch will likely sell around 61M units in the Americas in total, giving it around a 1M lead in that region.

Japan will give the Switch a pretty noticeable lead over the DS, its reasonable to assume Switch will sell around 37-38M in total in that region giving Switch a 4-5M lead over the DS.

The only region that's gonna be the Switch's Achilles heel is Europe, where outselling the DS is certainly out the question in Europe at this point with the DS having a relatively big lead over the Switch. Most likely the Switch should be able to reach 42M in the region assuming we see an average decline in sales, which will put the DS's lead at about 10M in Europe. Which sold around 52M in the region.

So between Europe,Americas, & Japan, the DS would have around a 4M lead in total combining the general total of predicted Switch sales in those regions, which means that the rest of the world region would need to make up that deficit, and it already has making the Switch highly likely to outsell the DS globally

In the "rest of the world" region the Switch had already won, with a pretty sizable lead as well with the Switch at 16M while the DS only sold 9M lifetime in ROTW. That 7M lead alone is able to make up for the 4M deficit when combining the predicted sales for Switch in the Americas,Japan, & Europe and the Switch is far from done in selling to the ROTW region. It'll probably sell up to 18-19M lifetime in those areas, giving Switch a 9-10M lead over the DS in ROTW.

Combining all these regions forecasts would make the Switch sell 159-160M lifetime, comfortably outselling DS & possibly PS2.

Right now outselling the DS is highly likely, outselling the PS2 id give more of a "maybe" chance

Last edited by javi741 - on 27 March 2024