Switch 2 Sales Predictions: Next PS2 or Wii U Disaster?

[Shadow1980]

I'm going to say somewhere in the 120-140M range. I already articulated my reasons for this in this post here.

javi741 said:

PS & Xbox also benefitted from the pandemic. The reason why sales didn't look as high for PS4 & Xbox One at the time were due to shortages, not demand. Shortages during that time plagued almost every portion of tech production in some way. While Sony & Microsoft could've definitely produced more PS4s & Xbox Ones if they wanted to, they decided to invest all of their production efforts straight towards their next gen consoles that were just releasing which is why the PS4's & Xbox One's lifespans ended fairly abruptly, but demand was definitely higher for those consoles as well it just doesn't show due to shortages at the time

You can definitely see where the COVID bump impacted the PS4 & XBO in U.S. sales data. They were doing far better than they had any reason to be doing during the spring of 2020. While they were down pretty significantly YoY in January & February 2020, which was consistent with continual declines experienced throughout 2019. But in March of 2020, both systems experienced a pretty significant YoY increase of about 25%, their first statistically significant increase since RDR2 was released in Oct. 2018.

Also, while the weekly average for March hardware sales is almost always down from February, March 2020 was way up month-over-month. In fact, it was only the fourth time on record that happened. Prior to this, the only other times March was up significantly over the preceding February was the PSP in March 2011 (due to a price cut), the GBA in March the PS2 in March 2001 (big restocks after being supply-constrained), and the N64 in March 1997 (due to its first price cut). But nothing happened in March 2020 besides the start of the pandemic and the beginning of everything getting shut down.

Then April happened. XBO sales that month were tied with Oct. 2016 for highest non-holiday month sales ever for the system, while the PS4 had its second biggest non-holiday month ever (only Sept. 2014, the month Destiny released, was higher). PS4 sales were 2.77 times higher than they were in April 2019, while XBO sales had more than tripled year-over-year. That was when the first round of stimulus checks were released. Both systems maintained year-over-year growth in May, and despite combined PS4+XBO sales in 2019 and Jan. & Feb. 2020 running well behind where 360+PS3 sales were in 2012 & Jan. & Feb. 2013, total PS4+XBO sales for the March-May period of 2020 were 81.7% higher than PS3+360 sales for the same period in 2013.

While both systems were back in YoY decline in the summer, there are caveats to that. The XBO was the first to run out of stock, and was pretty much dead in the water in July, selling a paltry 17k units that month. In three months it went from its strongest non-holiday month to its weakest. Restocks did improve the situation somewhat, but it wasn't enough to recover to where they were in May. The PS4 actually maintained relatively flat sales from May through July, even getting a bump in August, with very modest YoY declines for a system in its replacement year for those months. While its 2019 was overall much worse than the 360's 2012, the PS4's March-August period in 2020 was much better than the same period in 2013 for the 360. Despite its supply situation faring better than the the XBO, the PS4 did eventually run out of stock, stalling a bit in September and crashing hard in October. Neither system had numbers published for the 2020 holidays by NPD, but, if yearly totals given in the CESA White Paper are any indication, they did very poorly, with both selling less than 200k a piece across the two-month period.

To put all of this in pictures:

Honestly, I'm surprised there are still doubters out there. The initial spike is painfully obvious, and even the residual effects are clear. Sadly, there's always going to be contrarians no matter what the subject is, but I am glad that there's now at least a general consensus that the COVID bump is real. It's a massive improvement over the unnecessarily toxic & negative reactions a lot of people had to the idea back in 2020-21.

In any case, the PS4 & XBO could have done significantly better had 2020 not been a replacement year for them. Had COVID occurred just two years prior, they could have potentially set new records for their brands as they would not only have been at a higher point in their lives to begin with, they would have been better able to weather increased pressure on stock, similar to how the Switch never suffered total outages despite it also having increased demand. But since they were approaching their end of their lives, Sony & MS were drawing down shipments and were unable to account for the sudden increase in demand for consoles in 2020. But when they did have stock to meet demand, they were doing far better than they would have done in a world where COVID never existed.

Last edited by Shadow1980 - on 01 February 2025