Which Will Sell More in 2025: Xbox Series X/S or Nintendo Switch?

[archbrix]

Sephiran said:

Kyuu said:

Past trends are irrelevant. Past consoles received multiple pricesdrops while the PS5 and Xbox Series XS didn't in 4 years and counting (instead they got price hikes). Certain hypothetical scenarios may lead to temporary declines that can theoretically be reversed later.

What Totoki said implies they have no plans to do any significant pricedrops anytime soon, and perhaps he overestimated Xbox's competitive ability and is underestimating GTA6's demand, and maybe they plan to accelerate their PC support and thus weaken their hardware even further. It can be interpreted in a thousand ways.

PS5 with little competition from Xbox, a permanent pricedrop in the first half of the year, and GTA6 would 100% reverse the decline. And since Xbox sold extremely poorly last year, it's possible that both can reverse it if Microsoft decides to ship enough consoles (MS ignoring GTA6 would feed into PS5 selling even more). Nothing comparable to GTA6 ever released before. Every generation has its unique trends and changes that override past trends.

Look at yearly sales for consoles, all consoles sell less and less after they have hit peak yearly sales, even with price drops. PS4 continued to sell less even with price drops, Wii continued to sell less even with price drops, and the same is true for all consoles. Permanent Price cuts are a tool to slow down the sales decline, not to make consoles sell more than they did during their peak. So PS5 with price drops would not sell as much as it did during their peak, it will simply slow down the decline in sales. All consoles in history follow the same pattern, a growth phase and a decline phase. The only difference between consoles is that some have better legs and decline slower than other consoles with worse legs do.

The 3DS actually sold more in fiscal 2017 than it did in fiscal 2016, well past its peak.  Granted, it was only by about 480,000 units and it did have a new Pokemon game (not sure if it had a price drop) but it was the year before the Switch arrived and there was nothing on the level of GTA6 for it.

With GTA6 and aggressive pricing and/or bundles I could see the PS5 being up over 2024 (fiscal '25).  I don't think it would be able to beat its peak year, which is almost 21m, but >18m is possible.  I wouldn't bet on Xbox being able to be up year/year though, but then again, we are talking about a very low bar there.

Last edited by archbrix - on 27 January 2025