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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - (Update: 100 million mark reached!)Prediction:Switch will go on to sell 100+ million units

With everything Nintendo is doing with their IPs now, (Theme park, mobile etc) and how well their handhelds always sell, it's safe to say it'll most definitely do over 60m at least.

Japan who loves their handhelds will jump all over Monster Hunter, Yokai Watch, Animal Crossing and DEFINITELY Splatoon, not to mention Pokemon - where the CEO of Pokemon already confirmed they are making games for the console.

Just that alone will probably grant more sales in Japan than Wii U worldwide. Let's be real here. All of those franchises are killers when it comes to sales, plus when you hit the west with games like Zelda, Smash Bros, Mario and so many more you can safely say it's gonna do well. Even if third party support is limited like the 3DS, (which actually has decent support) Nintendo will actually be able to support the console themselves so much better than trying to develop and support two different systems at the same time.

The fact they no longer will have to make a Mario Party for both consoles, or a Paper Mario for both consoles etc... that says that Nintendo will be able to make a whole lot more. I'm extremely excited, even if third party support is limited. Which I don't think it'll be too limited.



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Hiku said:
Mummelmann said:

100 million Switch sales is extremely optimistic. PS4 is set to have around 50-51 million sales by the end of the year (which is less than I expected as can be seen in my sig, and people said I was being too pessimistic with my predictions), by which time it will have been on the market for over 3 years. The PS2 had a decade long lifespan and several 20 million + selling years, the PS4 is yet to even come close to a 20 million CY and won't have anywhere near as long a life as the PS2 or the PS3, most likely. The market is moving too fast and has branched out and become hinged upon competing on non-gaming features, constant revision and updates and there is no real developer incentive for keeping the 8th gen around as long as the 7th gen, which saw the rise of HD gaming and development tools and method was put in place and losses recovered on all sides by expanding the cycle.

How will the PS4 sell 110 million or more? How much will the PS4 Pro help the PS4 in total, will it lift it into a much higher baseline for 2017? How will it do that and why? The Xbox One has "won" North America three months in a row with the Slim, PS4's own slim didn't help them all that much and even if the PS4 is thrashing the Xbox and Wii U in Japan, it's really not selling impressive numbers at all there, and hasn't for the entire gen, much like the PS3 before it.

If the Xbox One Slim beats the PS4 Slim in North America, there is little reason to think that Scorpio won't beat the Pro in that region and with Japan mostly being irrelevant today, scraping together 110 million or more sales is simply not something I can any of the three doing easily any longer in the modern market. 100 million is not a certainty either, no more so than the PS3 catching the Wii like so many said it would.

110 million sales for the PS4 is very unrealistic, but 100 million sales for the Switch at present is even more so.

PS2 sold 157m. That's not the closets comparison for PS4. Compare it to PS3 instead. PS3 did 86m. You don't think PS4 will at least do 100m then? I feel that's very likely. And then there's a 10m margain to 110m. Certainly not out of the realm of possibilities imo. While the Japanese market has declined, PS4 is taking a much bigger marketshare in the US than it did with the PS3.

And let's not blow the 3-NPD-in-a-row out of proportion just yet. It's not enough to demonstrate a pattern yet, with people holding off for PS4 Pro, and there being more of a reason for XBO owners to upgrade to XBO S than there is for PS4 owners to upgrade to PS4 Slim. Which may have a limited effect on sales with a burst growth in the initial months, but when it comes to ppl who don't own either console, PS4 and Pro may very well still turn out to be the console of choice in USA. On top of that we don't even know the difference in sales numbers for the past two months I believe? Xbox One outsold PS4 by as little as 5k units during Halo 5 month, for example. If those are the kind of sales differences we've seen for the past few month, then it will take decades for XBO to close the 2m gap in the usa.

The PS3 had healthy growth every year for about 5 years running, PS4 is looking to be down from around 17.7 million in 2015 to 15-16 million for 2016, that's down about 10-13% yoy in its third CY on the market, it's in many ways the opposite of the PS3. Sure, it may pick up, but with the fast-paced, revisionist market we have today, things go out of style and other things pop in quickly and with little warning. If the PS4 is to sell more than 100 million, and certainly if they want 110 million, they'll need to work for it and probably release several revisions. And there's no way at any rate that the 8th gen will be as long as the 7th gen, so there's also the time factor.
The PS3 had an unusually late peak, with the peak year being just about on par with what the PS4 seems set for selling in 2016, with a slower decline and a longer lifespan, even with the PS4's obviously superior momentum at the beginning, selling 100 million won't be as easy as many seem to think.
Factor in irrelevant Japan and a turn towards an even more partitioned or even seggregated market, and 110 million becomes close to impossible. 50 million, or there about for three years (from launch in Novemeber 2013), three first year of sales, it would need a rather long lifecycle and some fairly small drops yoy to manage 110 million, we're talking good sales for another 5-6 years at least, which seems extremely unlikely.

Hey, I could be wrong as hell, I can see how many would look at the competition (or rather lack thereof) and think that this is easily done, and perhaps it is. But market reality today is not what it was in 2006, or even 2012 for that matter (when the 8th gen started). I guess time will tell.



Alkibiádēs said:
thismeintiel said:

If that makes you feel better.  Of course, the PS4 did a great job of turning those views into sales.  Let's see if the Switch can do the same.

Low likes-to-view ratio is a big red flag that most of the views came from bots. I fail to see how anyone can argue otherwise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILJmufDh-Mg

Oh, look at that! Mario Party is 3 times more popular than the PS4.

I think someone used view-bots on that video. 



                
       ---Member of the official Squeezol Fanclub---

Nah, Switch may dominate japanese market, but overall I think it will reach 3DS numbers. Which is fine with me.



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thismeintiel said:
 

This is a joke, right?  PS4 only doing ~50M by the end of the year?  You do realize that the PS4 was at 43.5 as of June 30th, and shipped 3.5M in the previous 3 months (which aren't exactly the busiest months of the year for HW), right?  You really don't think it'll ship another 10M+ in the following 6 months of the year after June?  Even with the holiday season coming up and the Pro launching? Awfully pessimistic of you.  Especially when it shipped 8.4M the last quarter of 2015 and will probably beat that this year with the Pro and Slim/price cut.

This year will most likely not be the peak year of the PS4, either, as I think that will go to 2017.  We have a lot of great SW launching next year, which most will have PS4 bundles, and it will be a full year of Pro and Slim sales.  Next holiday season, Sony will also most likely be dropping the price of the Pro to $349 and the Slim to $249, with a $199 BF SKU.

As for XBO winning (you were right to put that in quotations) the US, the only reason that is even happening is that many are waiting for the Pro.  Even with the Pro siphoning sales, the XBO only outsold the PS4 by ~160K over 3 months.  Going by Amazon, there's a possibility that the XBO will only slightly outsell the PS4 in Oct, even with GeOW4 and BF1, with a slim possibility that the PS4 actually has a slight edge.  Come Nov, I won't be surprised if the PS4 completely wipes out any gains the XBO has made. 

And this gen will be shorter than last gen, but it will not be any shorter than the PS2 era, which was out 6 years before the PS3 launched.  I expect the same for the PS4, with the PS5 most likely launching in 2019.  At that point the PS4 will be $199, with the Pro being $299, which will help it continue to sell decently even after the PS5 is launched.  Speaking of PS2, the PS4 is still outpacing it.  Not saying that will last forever, but it will make 100M+ an easy get.

PS4 needs a weekly average of 250-288k from June 30th for it to sit at 50 or 51 million by year's end, seeing it steadily around the 150k mark for most of summer. If we figure a ~150k baseline until, say last of October, that means about 3.000.000 sales in those 20 weeks between. That leaves 3.5-4.5 million sales for Novemeber and December, which requires a 437-562k average for those last eight weeks, which is quite low, I agree. My original year end predicton was 54 million by year's end, I don't think it will get there, especially with the famously poor tracking we've had of the PS4 this year, Q1 was a complete disaster with margins of error in the 50% range, it was all over the place. 54-55 million shipped, should be easy enough, especially with the Pro, but I can't see it matching last year's holiday season, to be honest. Start of the year through June was roughly flat in 2016, with Uncharted 4 in the mix and 50$ price reduction, that's not a sign of amazing health in the third CY on the market.

For 110 million + , the Pro would need to give the PS4 sustained momentum for several more years, it would likely require at least two more years in the 15-16 million range, with one 11-13 million year and preferably a couple of years with at least 7-8 million. That's good to decent sales for another five years at least, which is entering the PS4's eighth years on the market, by which time even the PS3 had slowed to a crawl and was barely moving, despite an abnormally late peak and long cycle. Yes, the competitor argument could be used here, the 360 was always neck and neck with the PS3 while the PS4 has dominated. But with that in mind, shouldn't the PS4 at least have managed a 20-25 million selling year already? With market conditions seemingly being so good for it? The Wii U never moved at all and the One has been underwhelming, to say the least, it should be open range for the PS4 and yet it's not really moving all that fast.

As for outpacing the PS2; it just isn't any more, and let's not forget how the Wii crushed the PS2 out of the gate, we saw how that worked (yes, different product, different demographic, but the point is that comparisons don't show the full picture). The PS2 had a heavily staggered launch, we can see that it sold about 18.8 million in its first full fiscal year with global availability, while the PS4 managed about 15 million in a comparable fiscal period, the PS2 then sold an estimated 22.5 million in the following fiscal year, with the PS4 selling about 18.2 million in the following fiscal year. For the third full fiscal year, the PS4 needs to be at around ~60 million lifetime to be equal to the PS2's roughly 20.1 million third full fiscal year, that means that even if my best case scenario comes true and the PS4 is at 54 million, it would need a weekly average through Q1 of about 460k.
So, in short; the PS4 is not outpacing the PS2, the staggered launch with the PS2 being available only in Japan for 7 months and not releasing in EU until 8 months after, that means that the first "full" fiscal year actually included only about 5 months worth of EU sales and 6 months worth of NA sales int eh tally, making the situation even more amazing.

The market is no longer the same, things have changed, the pace has quickened and the PS4 will have a hard time selling 110 million + units lifetime no matter how one looks at it, which was what I was asking that user about. 100 should be within reach, I can see it happening, I always said that the PS1 was far more likely a target than the PS2 for the PS4 to beat. But 110 million (which is PS1 territory) will be too tough from where I'm sitting.
Sustained good sales for several more year just isn't happening, according to the modern market trends and the nature of static product in consumer electronics. In my humble opinion. As always; I could be wrong though, I guess time will tell. 2017 baseline should tell us more, if the PS4 Pro can help the PS4 surpass the famed 20 million limit, there's a pretty chance it might sell as much as 110 million.



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Hiku said:

I don't know if I'd make a prediction on how much it will sell in 2016 just yet, with the holidays not far from their announcment of Pro and cutting of the price. Those factors were not present last year, so there's no clear comparison. There's also the long awaited Final Fantasy XV and Last Guardian coming out around that time so it'll be interesting to see how that may affect things.
But generally, I don't think the market has shrunk much outside of Japan due to the perception of mobile gaming in Japan. And I think Sony and MS can drag this generation out for a while more potently thanks to Pro and Scorpio. Nintendo's Switch being so underpowered certainly doesn't light a fire under their butts to hurry either.

No, no, the gaming market has grown immensely, but gamers are more scattered than ever. The so-called fringe consumers have more choices and opt for devices and games that suit their specific tastes and needs better (and budget). The console market as a whole is moving quite slowly compared to the 7th and yet revenue from gaming on a global scale has doubled in half a decade.
It is too early to tell, but I prefer being grounded to being overly optimistic or pessimistic.

Like I freely admit; I could be wrong, it's not like I haven't been wrong before.



Ryng_Tolu said:
Roronaa_chan said:

~70M ltd if they make several mistakes (some already happened, but not irreversible)
~110M ltd if they make few or "0" mistakes
Below PS4 in either scenario

You think PS4 will sell +110 million?

I don't think so, no.

I'm 100% certain.



No way but the Nintendo games will when released for Android and IOS. Switch will allow this to happen, have a look at Skyrim.



Well if you want to make prediction thread you need more then this , if it's me i will; make a formula and a lot of data and research, not just based on opinion.



HollyGamer said:
Well if you want to make prediction thread you need more then this , if it's me i will; make a formula and a lot of data and research, not just based on opinion.

It depends.

You have to use data and research only if you don't think that the Switch will be the best console ever. If you think it will be, you can say anything you think about without any need for things like numbers or research ;)