UPDATE: Will the Switch 2 Have Legs?

[Shadow1980]

XtremeBG said:

Not exactly. The moment Switch started selling more than the PS4 every month, was exactly with the Covid boost in 2020. And the moment when Switch passed it was in the 2020 holiday season (with total passing of lifetime sales in holiday 2022). If we don't holiday aligned it, they were going on top of each other for the first 3 years, until Switch pulls ahead with the Covid boost.

While COVID clearly did have a massive impact (as opposed to the factually baseless competing hypothesis of "Animal Crossing did it!"), I do want to point out that the Switch was already pulling ahead of the PS4 in the U.S. in its third year. The Switch sold about 1.5M more units in its first three calendar years than the PS4 did, nearly all of that due to the Switch's 2019 being significantly better than the PS4's 2016 (6.5M vs. 5.1M). Hard to say whether the Switch's baseline after everything was reopened and stimulus money dried up was sheer inertia from the COVID bump or if it was a natural sales level it would have had regardless, but in any case there's a good argument to be had that the Switch could have outsold the PS4 in the U.S. by a few million units even had COVID not been a thing. There's no way to know for certain, but it is a matter of fact that the Switch was starting to outpace the PS4 in the U.S. before COVID hit.

Data from the CESA White Paper suggest a similar trajectory in Canada, with the Switch starting to pull ahead in 2019.

In Japan, it was always incredibly lopsided in the Switch's favor regardless of any external factors. There was no possible scenario where the Switch wouldn't have outsold the PS4 by a three-to-one margin lifetime or close to it.

Europe was the only one of the three major markets where the Switch was lagging behind the PS4, which would have dragged the global total down in the PS4's favor. Even during & after COVID, the Switch never quite able to catch up to the PS4 in Europe.

As always, global sales don't always tell us the whole picture. It's like the 360 vs. the PS3. Sure, they ended up in a near tie, but that was purely a coincidence because of how the major markets shook up. The PS3 did sell at an overall faster rate worldwide, but it was incredibly lopsided in the 360's favor in NA & the UK, with the PS3 making up for it in continental Europe and Japan.

Without COVID, I think the Switch could have at least tied the PS4 globally if not beaten it by a decent margin (say, 10-15M). But again there's no way to know for sure.