The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[CourageTCD]

Norion said:

Soundwave said:

The PS2 is a paper champion anyway, it doesn't deserve the title it has. The only reason is has the record is because Sony bungled the PS3 and kept shipping PS2s in developing countries for years afterwards.

If Nintendo did the same thing with Switch or DS, they would easily be no.1, the PS2 needed several extra years of sales to get to 160.

Nintendo could have easily sold 165 million DS' and could do the same for the Switch, the PS3 being a terrible launch isn't something Sony should be proud of.

It took PS2 11 years to hit 150 million (Feb 14, 2011 according to Sony), the DS and Switch are both way above that, the PS2 isn't able to match prime for prime DS or Switch 1 sales, that's simply a fact, it needed to be dragged across the finish line with several extra years of sales. The Switch hit 150 million at its 8th year anniversary, 8 years vs 11 years is a laughable gap, that's not even close. 

I mostly agree though there is a point to be made about just how long the lifespan of the PS2 was even if a big factor in that was them screwing up the PS3. Its peak popularity is lower than the DS and Switch but it retained popularity for much longer than the DS and will retain it longer than the Switch will even with its successor platform coming out years sooner compared to the Switch so I do think it counts for something if it remains the best selling despite the Switch having years longer to itself before being replaced.

There's also other factors like how the Switch benefited a lot from covid and gaming being significantly bigger now compared to PS2 days though it did never get a price cut so was never really cheap like the DS and PS2 after they got price cuts. In terms of hardware sales I'd actually argue that the most impressive one of the three is likely the DS, it was such a behemoth during its peak period when gaming was smaller. If software sales are included then the winner is probably the Switch though.

I would add to this comment that nowadays we have so much competition for our attention if we compared to the PS2's time. That's one thing in favor of the PS2