The best-selling games of 2019 so far

Mortal Kombat 11
Kingdom Hearts III
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2^
Anthem^
Resident Evil 2 2019
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
Red Dead Redemption II
Days Gone
MLB 19: The Show
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

The best-selling games of the last 12 months

Red Dead Redemption II
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII^
NBA 2K19
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
Madden NFL 19^
Marvel’s Spider-Man
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
Mortal Kombat 11
FIFA 19^
Kingdom Hearts III
https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/18/may-2019-npd-the-end-of-a-generation/

I am truly amazed at how well MK11 has performed.

Chart time!

More charts to come later.

The PS4 had its worst month yet, and the XBO had its second-worst month (though its worst month, May 2014, was when they announced a Kinect-less SKU for release in June, resulting in a much larger April-to-May drop that year). For YTD sales, the PS4 is down 32.9% YoY while the XBO is down 34.1%. While the Switch's sales have grown by a healthy 23.3% for the year so far, it wasn't enough to offset the losses from the PS4 & XBO, and so far console sales are down 15.7% from the Jan.-May period of last year.

More charts!

The PS4 continues to enjoy a LTD surplus of over 8M units compared to the PS3. While the PS4 has had a much larger YoY decline in year-to-date sales compared to what the PS3 did in 2012 (-32.9% vs. -16%) and the PS4 has overall sold less so far this year than the PS3 did in the Jan.-May period of 2012 (1189k vs. 1019k), the total numerical difference is not massive, and was mostly due to February and March. The PS4 actually had a slight edge for May. Unless sales this holiday experience a catastrophic drop-off larger than the declines seen so far (-24% for Q1; the declines were much larger for April & May because of God of War's effect on sales last year), the PS3 should have a better 2019 than the PS3's 2012. If it can maintain a surplus of at least 8M for the remainder of its life, the PS4 should end with a lifetime tally of at least 35M (it should reach 30M by October).

Meanwhile, the XBO's deficit against the 360 continues to grow. The 360 was still doing well in 2011 (its fifth year), and would not start to decline until 2012, so the XBO is at an additional disadvantage due to a shorter overall primary lifespan. Because of the XBO's ever-growing deficit against the 360, the combined net surplus the PS4 & XBO have against the PS3 & 360 continues to decline, and has now dipped below 6 million units, it will likely dip below 4 million by year's end. It will almost certainly evaporate entirely, and I currently project that combined PS4 + XBO sales will end at around 67-68M, short of the combined 70M the PS3 & 360 sold. This does not necessarily mean the market for conventional consoles has shrunk, and we have to keep in mind that the 360 was the longest-lived console in terms of gap between its launch and the launch of its replacement (8 years, vs. 7 years for the PS4, XBO, and PS3). The PS4 & XBO's combined annual sales were over 9M units every year from 2014 to 2018, a streak that PS & Xbox weren't able to accomplish in prior generations, and it was a very strong 5-year period in general, about identical to the 2007-2012 period for PS3+360 sales and well ahead of the 2001-2005 period for PS2+OXbox sales.

I think I do. Let me check...

I have this, which also includes the N64, GC, and Wii U:

The Switch is still trailing the Wii by a considerable amount, but at the same time it's also far outpacing the N64, GC, and especially Wii U by a significant quantity. As home consoles go, it's Nintendo's second-biggest showing in the U.S. for the past five generations and is so far performing on par with the PS4 (and for Year 3 it's actually outpacing the PS4), which means it's only being clearly beaten by the PS2 & Wii. If it continues to experience at least 20% YoY growth on average for the remainder of the year and gets a big boost from Pokemon S&S, it ought to sell over 7 million units this year alone, far more than the 5.1M the PS4 sold in 2016. The last time a home console sold over 7M units in the U.S. in a single year was the 360 in 2011, and if the Switch does pass that milestone it will be only the sixth time on record a home console has done this (based on shipment data, the NES might have also accomplished this on two or three occasions). If I had to make a guess, the Switch will optimistically sell around 37.5M units, ±1.5M, which assumes 7M+ this year, only a modest 10% drop next year, a ~20% drop in 2021 and 2022, and the Switch's next-gen replacement coming no earlier than Q4 2023. Assuming my estimate of 35M the other day for the PS4 comes true, here's what the all-time Top 5 rankings in the U.S. could look like by time the Switch is discontinued:

PS2: 46.7M
360: 43.2M
Wii: 41.8M
Switch: 37.5M
PS4: 35M

Since I expect a high likelihood of the PS vs. Xbox race being much closer next generation, I don't expect either the PS5 or Scarlett to sell over 35M units individually in the U.S., though I do think they'll end up around 65M together.

Wow at those upcoming Wii December sales! But the rest of the year was already foreshadowing what to come: The baseline dropped a lot compared to the previous years, and it looks like Switch has a shot at surpassing the Wii in July and August, and most probably will surpass it in November.

And I would never have guessed that the N64 would have won the first holiday season against Switch and Wii...

Yeah, the Wii was down quite a bit for most of 2009. While it was up a good bit for January and February, it was down every month from March to November. For the whole March-Nov. period, it was down 40.5%. Even if you include January & February, it was still down 27.9% for the year by the end of November. Then December comes along with a huge YoY increase that causes 2009 to almost close the gap with 2008, with the year as a whole being down only 5.7%. But in 2010 the Wii started to decline very quickly. The Switch will probably never sell what the Wii did because of how well the Wii sold in the 2007-2009 period, but the Switch could have overall better legs.

Actually, the N64 had a rather modest decline of only 7.8% in 1998, though that decline did accelerate over time, with 1999 being down 14.5%, 2000 being down 28.5%, and 2001 (the GC's release year) being down a massive 54%, with the system having completely flat-lined in 2002. Also, the N64 was getting steady support from Nintendo & Rare and several third parties through 2000. The N64's problem was that the PS1 started to leave it in the dust, and that was because the PS1 utterly outclassed it in terms of third-party support, and that was a time when third-party games were predominantly exclusive to one system (multiplatform didn't start to become the norm until the following generation). Sure, the N64 had support from Acclaim, Activision, EA, Midway, LucasArts, and THQ, very few of those were titles with massive mainstream appeal, with wrestling games and Turok being about the only ones to perform well on the system. Meanwhile, the PS1 had Final Fantasy, Tekken, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Crash, Spyro, Driver, and a bunch of other games that never made it to the N64 (well, RE2 did get a belated N64 port...). Final Fantasy VII in particular was what propelled the PS1 to new heights. While the PS1 did see steady improvement from its initially dismal sales thanks in large part to being reduced to $200 in May 1996 and then to $150 in March 1997, it wasn't until FFVII was released in Sept. 1997 that its sales really took off.

The N64 did start off strong, running off of the strength of the Nintendo brand in America. It sold almost as much in the entirety of 1996 as the PS1 did despite only being available for the last 14 weeks of the year. In 1997, it sold nearly 4.5 million units, which still ranks among the best first full years of a system ever (only slightly behind the Switch's 2017 and the PS4's 2014). But the PS1, despite struggling out of the gate, had a lot more going for it in the long run, and once it had that big super-hyped killer app in the form of FFVII, it was all over for the N64.

"Bias"? C'mon, man. When have you known me to be biased towards or against any of the Big Three? I always try to be as impartial as possible.

I do not think it is imperative that we include the NES and SNES when comparing the Switch to the Nintendo systems we do have complete data for. For one, those systems were supported for a much longer time than any subsequent Nintendo console, with decent amounts of software coming out even after their successors were released. Even Nintendo released some games for both after their successors were released. Meanwhile, the N64, GC, and Wii U had essentially no appreciable software support after they were replaced (in fact, the Wii U was discontinued before it was replaced), and though the Wii had a fair amount of games released for it after the Wii U launched, none of them were Nintendo games, and nearly all were party games or second- & third-rate licensed titles, so it doesn't really count as having strong late-life software support, either.

And Nintendo's handhelds haven't had consistently strong software support after they were replaced, either. The Game Boy quickly stopped getting games once the GBC was released (even though the GBC was part of the same hardware family). Support for the GBC dried up quickly once the GBA was released. The DS had only a handful of games released after the 3DS was released. The GBA was the one exception, as it did have some solid support until 2007 (though Nintendo's support was largely minimal), three years after the DS was released, but then again the DS apparently wasn't initially intended to replace the GBA. Likely because of these factors, the GBA had the best legs of any Nintendo handheld, at least in absolute terms, with over 8.6M units sold from 2005 to 2007 (the DS sold 6.37M from 2011 to 2013, while the GB and GBC flatlined the year after they were replaced). With no official replacement for the 3DS (the Switch wasn't intended to replace it), it's hard to gauge its legs as there's no viable reference point to make comparisons, through from 2014 to 2017 it was essentially flat so in relative terms it wasn't dropping fast even by Year 7. However, the 3DS has no more software support on the horizon, so its sales, which are already declining quickly, will probably dry up even quicker.

Seeing as over the past 20 years Nintendo hasn't supported either their home consoles or their handhelds once an official replacement is released, we shouldn't expect anything different with the Switch. Assuming the Switch gets an official replacement, we should see first-party support vanish quickly after that point. We shouldn't expect much from third parties either in the long run, as while it's gotten a few token titles of note, once third parties move fully to PS5 and Scarlett it probably won't even get that much.

Regarding hardware revisions, I am taking that into account. Typically, Nintendo releases at least one major hardware revision for its handhelds, and the Switch does technically have the form factor of a handheld, so you're right that we should expect a Switch revision, which the rumor mill suggests is on the way. The Game Boy had the Pocket and Color (the latter technically a replacement for previous models, even though it was just an upgraded Game Boy and officially part of the same hardware family), and what data we have shows the latter doing amazing after years of declining sales of the older models. The GBA had the "SP" model, which gave sales a solid boost for about a year (the March 2003 - Feb. 2004 period was up 19.8% over the previous 12-month period). The DS had the Lite, which caused its initially unimpressive sales to have a massive spike in its baseline (which actually continued to improved over the next three years), and the DSi, which caused a significant short-term boost. The 3DS had the XL and 2DS, which had no real effect on sales, and the New 3DS, which did cause a major but very short-term spike in sales.

So, what will the Switch get for its hardware revisions? A handheld-only "Mini" model with a better battery/lower power consumption so it'll last more than two hours? A higher-end model capable of higher resolutions and better performance in general? We don't know since Nintendo hasn't deemed it necessary to tell us yet. But I tend to lean towards conservative estimates for any system when projecting future sales, so whatever hardware revision(s) we get I am assuming provides a significant but relatively short-term boost. Is it possible it could cause a major long-term boost to sales? Sure. Do I think it'll do anything like the DS Lite or Game Boy Color? Not a chance in hell. I think a best-case scenario would be something more akin to the GBA SP, where the revision causes a solid boost lasting maybe a year at most.

Let's assume that the Switch continues to average between 25-30% YoY growth for the remainder of the year, plus an additional 500k for hardware moved by Pokemon S&S. That would put it at the 7.5-7.8M range, which I think is a solid upper limit. Assuming the Switch's hardware revision comes out in Q1 2020, I could potentially see maybe around 8.5M for next year as an absolute best-case scenario for next year, but if the effects are more short-lived we could see sales that are flat or maybe even down from this year. I'll split the difference and go with an even 8 million. Let's further assume that 2021 is the start of the decline phase of the Switch's life, but with a relatively modest ~20% YoY decline for both 2021 and 2022, with the Switch's successor releasing in 2023, causing sales to drop by 40-50%, and then sales rapidly flatlining afterward (2-2.5M tops for 2024 & beyond).

We could see a scenario like this:

That would be enough to just barely pass the Wii in the U.S.

But I consider that an absolute best-case scenario. Again, could it happen? Certainly. Will it happen? I wouldn't be willing to bet on it.

Now, I will admit that, after looking back over my data, 35M as a median is indeed too low, though I think it is a good low-end figure for the Switch. We shouldn't expect it to sell significantly less than that. 41-42M is as I said the highest I expect it to go; I don't see it blowing past the Wii's lifetime total by a significant margin. So, that would mean 38M is a good mid-range estimate. Still about 3.8M million short of the Wii, but an impressive figure to be certain.