UPDATE: Latest Profile (MAY Year 5)

Hi everyone, This thread is dedicated to Nintendo Switch sales. Each month we will be able to analyze how it's sales did compared to all other consoles (Month Aligned). This first post will always have the latest month, but you can jump to the link above to see the discussion of the latest month.

Continuing with  this analysis, here is the Month aligned race between the NS and the DS.

This race is absolutely close, both lines seem to be merging.

Some highlights of this race:

1) The DS currently leads by 1.18M units.

2) The DS sold 1.9M units on January Year 4, so the Switch has to surpass this in order to shrink the gap.

3) On December year 4 the DS sold 6.3M units compared to the 6.0M units of the NS.

4) During Year 4 the Switch has beaten the DS during 4 of the 10 months.

5) During Year 4 The Switch is 1.3M units ahead of the DS

6) The Switch has currently sold 25.6M units in year 4, it needs 2.3M more during the months of January+February in order to beat the DS.

Monster Hunter Rise should give the Switch another boost this year. And in the near future, games like the Breath of the Wild Sequel and Metroid Prime 4, along with still unannounced titles, and other minor games should help it to keep selling.

I'm curious to see how far the Switch can reach.

Really interesting. Switch didn't reach 30 millions but 28.3 is an incredible number. I feel like this year was pretty overwhelming that we didn't really realize but like only Wii and DS achieved such highs. Let's see how much it can stabilize in 2021. I feel like Jan + Feb should be up. Switch was out of stock pretty much all spring and summer last year and some weeks were pretty weak. So there is faith it could still catch up if Nintendo is aggressive enough. It will be very interesting.

If it can keep up with 2020, the Switch will enter DS/PS2 territory and would probably end higher than 145 millions.

Hi @xMetroid  You are absolutely right, it is easy to overlook such an incredible accomplishment for the Switch. It is true that the Wii beat the Switch this december, but Year 4 for the Wii was 19M compared to the 28.3M of the Switch. The best 12 consecutive months for the Wii was 24M. The best year of the PS2 seems to be 22M. While the best 12 months for the DS are 29.5M

There is a very slight chance that the Switch could outsell the past January and February by 1.2M in order to tie the DS (it would need 3.8M units in two months)

The Gap charts with the Wii are very interesting as well:

During all of the past 9 months the NS just blasted upwards, this December seems to me like the Last hurrah for the Wii, the final battle that they just put everything they got in order to try and survive. But after this, I find it hard to think that the Wii will have many months that it can outsell the NS. Maybe January (1.5M) but not much more after that. 

Here are the Year 4 and 5:

As you can see, the NS beat Wii every month except this last one. But then when Year 5 comes around I don't see any reason to think that the NS will sell so little as to be beaten by the Wii on any month. 

Bonus Question: What happened on this Year 4 Holiday for the Wii to go full on Hulk mode?

Wii first price cut was end of Sept 2009 I think, plus NSMBWii in November.

I don't think Wii & DS December records will be broken any year soon.

Oh you're right ! I thought for a second Wii in it's peak had a better year than the Switch in 2020 but yea it wasn't close even. So only the DS peaked higher in a 12 month period and not from that much. Thing is the DS got pretty much 2 years of peak, so let's hope Switch doesn't start declining too much this year. I think Switch will live longer than the DS, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't reach the same level as quickly. I really think if the Switch maintain it's sales this year, it will be able to surpass the DS. 

I also don't see the Switch dying down fast over the years since i only see positive stuff about the system online, aside from the joycon drift really. While the Wii was suffering a lot from it's casual family approach and them moving on to another new technology (kinect) other than remote motion control. Also the quick rise of HD TVs.. like the Wii had so much against it at the time, and i don't see anything like that affecting the Switch. It also doesn't have any competition in that market while Sony and MS tried to steal Wii's thunder with their own motion thing.

Looking at the weekly numbers for the NS, it is having a fantastic month of January. After 3 weeks it is virtually tied with the DS on it's fourth January (2008). It is worth noting that that year the DS was able to sell over 28.5M consoles. There is obviously many weeks ahead, but it is definitely a great start.

Comparing the NS versus last year, the lead is quite large at 185k in favor of 2021.

The 2021 NS needs to build as much of a lead as possible if it wants to stand a chance to remain on top after The March and April madness of 2020.

Didn't realize that Switch would have a better 12-month period than year 4 DS. I think Switch will sell about 3M total for January + February, so it should be able to edge out the 2.3M that it needs.

Hi @The_Liquid_Laser You bring up a very interesting topic. As you mentioned it seems like being able to beat DS year 4 is quite a possibility, There are currently 3 targets I am looking at for the NS.

1) Best year 4 (DS has the record with 27.9M): NS  needs ~1M more in 5 weeks.

2) Most Accumulative sales after 4 Years (DS has the record with 81.7M): NS needs ~3.5M in the next 5 weeks.

3) Best year of any console (DS has the record with 28.5M on its 5th year): NS needs 1.6M in the next 5 weeks.

As a reference, looking back at 2020 these are the sales for those last 5 weeks.

That is 1.3M total for those weeks.

This means that probably the best year 4 record is going to be beaten (like you mentioned). 

The most Accumulative sales after 4 years is completely out of reach, but it will be interesting to see just how much the NS is able to close this gap.

The best year of any console record is the closest race, the NS would need to be up about 23% from last year in order to achieve it. Currently the NS has been able to outsell 2020 by more than 50% so it is definitely within reach.

edit: here is a chart of the best 3 years of the DS and how it compares to the NS: