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Forums - Gaming - Master analyst, Michael Pachter, predicts that Switch will not sell near Wii.

sethnintendo on 07 November 2021

He is a master analyst because he is such a fuck up that he can still keep a job.  If anyone else fucked up at their job as much as he does they would have been fired a long time ago.  This guy is a fucking cockroach



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SanAndreasX on 07 November 2021

Nintendooooooom?



SanAndreasX on 07 November 2021

I thought it might do 80 million, which is about what GBA and PSP did. The idea that it could beat the PS4 was outside the realm of possibility. Other than that, I was hyped about the Switch from the word go.



SanAndreasX on 07 November 2021

I thought it might do 80 million, which is about what GBA and PSP did. The idea that it could beat the PS4 was outside the realm of possibility in 2017. Other than that, I was hyped about the Switch from the word go.



AltarofKez on 07 November 2021
Dulfite said:

Funny part is, my thoughts back then were quite extreme compared to what seemed like most people's thinking. Where many didn't think it would do better than Wii U, I thought it would do Wii U + 3DS sales, so roughly 90 million. Now my seemingly radical prediction is getting blown away lol.

I considered myself pessimistic/skeptical before launch, with the main problems I had being that the software lineup seemed overly reliant on ports and sequels of Wii U games, and just how bad Nintendo's marketing was the previous gen.  But whenever I was asked to predict a specific number I was like "...well it can't do worse than the 3DS, right?"  Nintendo made a lot of bad decisions with the 3DS and still sold a bunch. Whereas the Switch had a better hook, and it was going to be the only place to get Nintendo games so the fans had nowhere else to go.  This means that I put the bare minimum at 60-70 million, and once I accepted that, 100 million didn't seem so crazy anymore.



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Leynos on 07 November 2021

Maybe he's just really good at receiving ANAL so he's an Analyst.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

curl-6 on 07 November 2021

I was extremely pessimistic about Switch prior to its launch and for the first couple of months, but once it became clear they'd fixed their Wii U era problems, my prediction was 100-110 million, which as it turns out was overly conservative.



Kristof81 on 08 November 2021

2017 replies:

Mar1217 said:

Thanks Patcher, you just confirmed that the Switch will destroy the Wii in terms of sales.

Pemalite said:

If Patcher says Switch will not sell near the Wii...

Then it's all but confirmed that Switch will match/exceed the Wii's sales. ;)

Qwark said:

Switch outselling Wii confirmed

LipeJJ said:

Well, that means it will outsell Wii easily.

asqarkabab said:

So the switch will sell shittons

Hahaha, I love those 



Mnementh on 08 November 2021
Shadow1980 said:
Mnementh said:

Actually Switch synced up with PS4 pretty early on and was on track to sell similarly. You could argue that Playstation systems had historically more longevity than than Nintendo systems (although this time PS4 is coming to a hard stop), but still 100M were plausible after some months of sales.

The boost in 2020 may have been unpredictable, but even before that Switch was clearly a success.

I think that second sentence is the pertinent part. While the Switch was initially doing about on par with the PS4 globally (a coincidence, as the differences in regional sales ended up just happening to produce that result), Nintendo systems have averaged shorter life cycles than PS & Xbox systems have since Gen 7 (the Famicom and Game Boy being the only notable exceptions), and they always had a tendency to decline quickly once they passed their peak. Prior to you-know-what, most people were already thinking the Switch was likely to decline in 2020. So, even if both systems had a similar starting point, it would have been reasonable to think later-life sales would have favored the PS4. And as mentioned, when comparing the Switch strictly to other Nintendo systems to make for more apt comparisons, it was selling at or slightly above 3DS levels at its start, and below Wii levels in North America and Europe.

So 100M may not have been an implausible estimate to make in mid-2017, but it would likely have been considered very optimistic, though conversely 70M seemed like a good estimate for the floor. As time passed, though, 100M seemed more and more plausible. Looking back at some of my other past predictions, in early 2020 before Germy McGee's Sales Jamboree, I was thinking that the Switch would have a lifetime worldwide sales total at or slightly above the Wii's.

Yeah, that is why I said plausible, 70M-100M seems like a good corridor for predictions at that time. But we were at this point clearly way ahead of WiiU. And that is the point: I think after the WiiU many people (myself included) tended to view Switch sales perspective more pessimistic, even though the first data showed much better momentum. Nintendo lost trust in their abilities to sell a system with the WiiU. So many tended to see things more pessimistic.



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Kakadu18 on 08 November 2021
Ka-pi96 said:

He's right though!

The Earth has moved millions of miles between the releases of the Wii and Switch, so it didn't sell anywhere near the Wii.

Damn you're right. Pachter is a genius, a true master analyst.