The Switch launch numbers are meaningless

[Shadow1980]

firebush03 said:

random, but i just noticed that DC had a bigger U.S. launch month than PS2….that’s wild lol. (tho technically this is comparing several weeks of DC sales to only a few days of PS2.)

That's why I prefer how sales are tracked in Japan. Weekly sales give better granularity than monthly sales, which means more accurate comparisons of launches, better determination the impacts of price cuts, software releases, etc., on sales.

Still, even if you take into account the fact it launched earlier in its launch month, the DC did have a pretty good launch. I was able to find some data points for its sales at various points during its launch window.

It sold 372k in its first four days, not much less than the 391k the PS2 sold in its first three days. The 569k units it sold in the 25 days it was available during its launch month was only slightly less than the 579k the PS2 sold in its first 31 days (the last 3 days of October and the 28 days of the November sales period). It sold almost as many units in Oct. 1999 as the PS2 did in Nov. 2000, which indicates that it was having similar post-launch momentum. Not bad, all things considered, though I imagine the PS2 would have had a much, much better launch if there wasn't a supply shortage.

The bottom chart illustrates the importance of more granular sales data, as well as the point I made in my previous post that sales in the U.S. almost certainly follow a similar pattern to Japan, where nearly every system exhibits a big launch week followed by a steep decline towards a baseline (the exceptions are typically systems launched in December where holidays sales pump the brakes on that post-launch decline). Within four days, the DC had sold 372k units, 225k (over 60%) of which was just day one. It sold only 142k in the ten days from Day 5 to Day 14, and in the eleven days after that it sold only 55k. So, nearly two-thirds of its sales in its launch month came from just the first four days. This shows how front-loaded the sales were during its launch month, which is why it isn't terribly advantaged when compared to the PS2.