SW1 '25 vs. DS '11/3DS '17/Wii '12 Comparison Thread!

[PAOerfulone]

"It's been 3,000 years..."

Good evening one and all,

I'M BACK! 

I know I've always been here and never actually left the site, but if you recall, a few years back, I was doing these hardware sales comparison threads where I compared sales for all three, then eventually five, major consoles Year over Year and even to their predecessors on a week-to-week basis. Back when the sales numbers were updated weekly.

But I eventually stopped doing them because what had started out as a project on the side and something fun, I enjoyed and loved doing because I loved seeing the stats and following the trends and charts like we all do, eventually became so overwhelming to the point where it started feeling like a job. It felt like work, and the work just became too much. And I didn't want to do it anymore.

Since then @XtremeBG has picked up the wagon and led the charge in posting the comparison threads and has done a marvelous job with them! Definitely check those out if you haven't already, and if you have, continue to do so. Excellent work on those threads. Keep it up, BG!

So, with another holiday season come and gone, especially for the Nintendo Switch, which has now concluded its 8th, yes, EIGHTH holiday season, and the recently announced Nintendo Switch 2 on the horizon, everyone here and on many sites has speculated on how much gas the Switch 1 (Gotta get used to calling it that) has left in the tank. Can it get to 160 million? And can it actually, really catch and surpass the PlayStation 2?

So if you follow @RolStoppable 's thread "The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch" I posted a comment that showed the sales of various consoles from the years their successors released until discontinuation - To serve as a reference for how much Switch can realistically sell from 2025 onwards with Switch 2 slated to release this year. And with Nintendo's next financial report due in less than two weeks on Tues, Feb 4th - where they'll release the latest Switch shipment figures as of Dec 31, 2024 - It has led my mind racing as to what exactly Switch's chances, how much it needs to sell, and how much CAN it sell based on its predecessors' history, or if it'll even follow their history.

And before I knew it, that old spark started to come back! I spent one afternoon gathering specifically the regional data for the DS in 2011, 3DS in 2017, and Wii in 2012 to see how they sold when their respective successors released in that year - To give me an idea of what Switch could do this year.  And in the following three comments after this OP, you will see the results.

Now, this will be a one-time thing for a very special occasion to see if Switch can maintain the pace it needs to catch the PS2. I don't plan on doing any comparison threads with the PS5 or Series S/X. This may even carry into next year where I do ANOTHER thread comparing Switch 1 to other systems in the 2ND years of their successors' life cycles. But I'm getting WAY ahead of myself here. For now, let's just stay focused on this one.

With that said, folks. WELCOME to my first comparison thread in a long time! Nintendo Switch 1 '25 vs. Nintendo DS '11, Nintendo 3DS '17, and Nintendo Wii '12!

And the Nintendo Switch 1's march towards potential history!