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Forums - Sales - Will this be the last year PS4 outsells Switch?

Alby_da_Wolf on 03 June 2018

While it's a safe prediction that NS will keep on growing in the next years, we don't know yet if, when and by how much Sony will cut PS4 price, so it's quite difficult to predict PS4 sales curve too.
For this year, anyway, the gap is currently still in favour of PS4 and growing, the longer this situation lasts, the huger a NS BF and XMas sales boost should be to invert the situation and give NS the victory for 2018.



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Barkley on 03 June 2018
Megiddo said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

Well Switch did dominate in December.

Okay, so Switch "dominated" in December with 4.05 million units sold compared to 3.55 million PS4 units sold.

Yeah someone should define "Domination" same as in the "Will Switch Dominate the Holidays" thread. Is outselling the ps4 by 14% really "domination"?



fedfed on 03 June 2018

I don't think it will happen either this year. From September Nintendo should be on fire.



Switch!!!

LethalP on 03 June 2018
Barkley said:
Megiddo said:

Okay, so Switch "dominated" in December with 4.05 million units sold compared to 3.55 million PS4 units sold.

Yeah someone should define "Domination" same as in the "Will Switch Dominate the Holidays" thread. Is outselling the ps4 by 14% really "domination"?

They want to outsell PS4 by way more than that if they wish to make up for the 1.5 million lead PS4 currently has, never mind what it will be by the fall/holidays.

As for VGChartz accuracy, we will know when PS4 announces 80 million.



VAMatt on 03 June 2018
Luke888 said:
VAMatt said:
I don't trust Nintendo's forecasts at all. They've proven time and time again that they have no idea how many units they will sell. So, the fact that they've forecasted more Switch sales than Sony has forecast for PS4 means very little.

I'm thinking PS4 will outsell Switch in 2018. Next year is a lot harder to call. If Nintendo will do some discounting, and they have some big titles to announce (such as a 2D Mario and Kart 9), it seems reasonable to believe that Switch will take the lead in annual sales at that point. Then again, Nintendo is infamous for missing launch dates for games. So, if they delay big 2018 titles into 2019, or delay big 2019 titles into 2020, that throws a bunch of question marks all over the place, and I have no idea what to expect in terms of console sales.

They still haven't delayed one first party game for Switch, I think they don't want to underwhelm fans expectations, heck they even moved Odyssey from a Holiday title to the Fall of 2017... Also the sales forecasts for Switch have always been on the consevative side since they didn't know how popular it could get, considering many Pokémon fans still have to purchase one and that Smash is one of their biggest Killer Apps I think the 20M forecast is realistic, the fiscal year ends in March 2019, the first half of 2019 will have more games than this year, leading to a rise in sales in the slowest quarter of Switch's first year

Nintendo certainly has done better in recent years, in terms of not delaying big games.  (Unless you consider BotW, which was originally expected to launch for WiiU a year or two before it did).  

As for forecasting hardware sales..... over the last couple of decades, I think they've missed their forecasts by a wide margin more often than they've hit their numbers.  I agree with you that 20 million for the current fiscal year seems reasonable.  But, like I said before, Nintendo's history of inaccurate forecasts and missing launch dates means my level of confidence in that number is much lower than it would likely be if we were talking about Sony or MS.  



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Barkley on 03 June 2018
Teeqoz said:
Barkley said:

Which is easily explained by the PS4 having 2.9m units on shelves at the end of 2017, and the Switch having stock issues in 2017. Switch would want to ship more then they could sell in that quarter to finally get a healthy amount of units stockpiled on shelves for sale, and Sony would want to ship less to reduce excess stock.

VGC would have us believe the PS4 went from having 2.9 million units on shelves at the end of 2017 to 1.4 million by the end of this Q1. Do you think the PS4 sold 3.94 million in Q1? Because that's what VGC is saying right now. About 971k came from the US, as per NPD, while (an abnormally high) 720k came from Japan, as per Media Create. That still leaves us 2.25 million short of what VGC suggests for Q1. Personally, I think that's too much for Europe and RoW to cover...

Actually 2.25m isn't too much for EU+RoW and the Rest of NA.

Let's look back at figures we knew were near correct because of official Sony Numbers.   https://web.archive.org/web/20180207194245/http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

Total - 74.01m
NA -  25.2m (23.02m USA)
EU - 29.62m
RoW - 13.24m
Japan - 5.95m

Using that information we can determine:

USA+Japan = 39.14% of PS4 Sales
Everywhere Else = 60.86% of PS4 Sales

For the Q1 as the figures you've posted show, USA+Japan make up 42.91% of sales, higher than usual (due to monster hunter).

So yeah actually 2.25m for RoW+EU+Rest of NA for Q1 is actually below the usual proportion, likely due to strong japanese sales with monster hunter.

(Had to use Platform Totals page from a previous date because you can't show NA sales in the weekly/yearly charts only USA? Also 7th Jan is closest I could get to the December 31st which is when Sony gave figures.)



LethalP on 03 June 2018

Barkley has his head screwed on.



Nem on 03 June 2018
Barkley said:
Teeqoz said:

VGC would have us believe the PS4 went from having 2.9 million units on shelves at the end of 2017 to 1.4 million by the end of this Q1. Do you think the PS4 sold 3.94 million in Q1? Because that's what VGC is saying right now. About 971k came from the US, as per NPD, while (an abnormally high) 720k came from Japan, as per Media Create. That still leaves us 2.25 million short of what VGC suggests for Q1. Personally, I think that's too much for Europe and RoW to cover...

Actually 2.25m isn't too much for EU+RoW and the Rest of NA.

Let's look back at figures we knew were near correct because of official Sony Numbers.   https://web.archive.org/web/20180207194245/http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

Total - 74.01m
NA -  25.2m (23.02m USA)
EU - 29.62m
RoW - 13.24m
Japan - 5.95m

Using that information we can determine:

USA+Japan = 39.14% of PS4 Sales
Everywhere Else = 60.86% of PS4 Sales

For the Q1 as the figures you've posted show, USA+Japan make up 42.91% of sales, higher than usual (due to monster hunter).

So yeah actually 2.25m for RoW+EU+Rest of NA for Q1 is actually below the usual proportion, likely due to strong japanese sales with monster hunter.

(Had to use Platform Totals page from a previous date because you can't show NA sales in the weekly/yearly charts only USA? Also 7th Jan is closest I could get to the December 31st which is when Sony gave figures.)

You just blew his mind.

People are used to think the US is the biggest market. But, the US is in close competition between all 3, wich makes it less of a weight in the overall sales difference.



quickrick on 03 June 2018
LethalP said:
quickrick said:

Wow ps4 outsold switch by 7 million last year, thats insane.

To be fair PS4 (2017) also beat PS4 (2014) by 6 million. Launch years for any console can't stack up to prime years, not a fair comparison.

I consider switch to already be in the prime of its life when it 299$, and already has mario kart, mario odyssey, zelda, and splatoon 2. imagine if ps4 was 299$ and had GOW, last us, spider man, and uncharted 4 in it's first year. 



Teeqoz on 03 June 2018
LethalP said:
Teeqoz said:

The current gap is only reported by VGC. It's meaningless until we have more concrete figures. I suspect the difference between PS4 and Switch sales is exaggerated on VGC and in reality the gap is much smaller. You can read my response to Barkley below - the concrete sales sources available makes VGC's estimates hard to believe.

VGC would have us believe the PS4 went from having 2.9 million units on shelves at the end of 2017 to 1.4 million by the end of this Q1. Do you think the PS4 sold 3.94 million in Q1? Because that's what VGC is saying right now. About 971k came from the US, as per NPD, while (an abnormally high) 720k came from Japan, as per Media Create. That still leaves us 2.25 million short of what VGC suggests for Q1. Personally, I think that's too much for Europe and RoW to cover...

That may well be, hold on to that possibility! But also just wait until Sony announces 80 million. If it's not in June, then VGChartz is overtracking PS4.

You're making it out like I have some preference. I don't mind either way (though I've got a financial interest in the PS4 doing well, so there's that). We'll see what figures Sony announce, they've often given figures at E3. I'd love for them to have a blowout 2018.

LethalP said:
Teeqoz said:

VGC would have us believe the PS4 went from having 2.9 million units on shelves at the end of 2017 to 1.4 million by the end of this Q1. Do you think the PS4 sold 3.94 million in Q1? Because that's what VGC is saying right now. About 971k came from the US, as per NPD, while (an abnormally high) 720k came from Japan, as per Media Create. That still leaves us 2.25 million short of what VGC suggests for Q1. Personally, I think that's too much for Europe and RoW to cover...

Looking at VGC data last year, PS4 did 1,010,519 units in the US, 1,742,809 in Europe, 514,757 in Japan and 786,241 RoW bringing it to 4,054,326 Globally by March 31st. This was after taking into account the 7 million sold in 2017 by June 11th. Looking at how close the US numbers are this year, why would worldwide be much different? Especially with higher Japanese sales because of MHW.

To me, looking at 2018 NPD numbers in Q1, 3.9 million worldwide seems perfectly plausable. PS4 actually sells outside the main markets. It's already the 3rd best selling console of all time outside of the US, EU, and JP behind PSP and PS2.

See below.

Barkley said:
Teeqoz said:

VGC would have us believe the PS4 went from having 2.9 million units on shelves at the end of 2017 to 1.4 million by the end of this Q1. Do you think the PS4 sold 3.94 million in Q1? Because that's what VGC is saying right now. About 971k came from the US, as per NPD, while (an abnormally high) 720k came from Japan, as per Media Create. That still leaves us 2.25 million short of what VGC suggests for Q1. Personally, I think that's too much for Europe and RoW to cover...

Actually 2.25m isn't too much for EU+RoW and the Rest of NA.

Let's look back at figures we knew were near correct because of official Sony Numbers.   https://web.archive.org/web/20180207194245/http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

Total - 74.01m
NA -  25.2m (23.02m USA)
EU - 29.62m
RoW - 13.24m
Japan - 5.95m

Using that information we can determine:

USA+Japan = 39.14% of PS4 Sales
Everywhere Else = 60.86% of PS4 Sales

For the Q1 as the figures you've posted show, USA+Japan make up 42.91% of sales, higher than usual (due to monster hunter).

So yeah actually 2.25m for RoW+EU+Rest of NA for Q1 is actually below the usual proportion, likely due to strong japanese sales with monster hunter.

(Had to use Platform Totals page from a previous date because you can't show NA sales in the weekly/yearly charts only USA? Also 7th Jan is closest I could get to the December 31st which is when Sony gave figures.)

I'd be more interested in that split for Q1, but the only thing available is VGC numbers, which leaves me in a catch 22. Can't argue about the viability of VGC figures when VGC is the only available source for data. We shall see how this plays out over the rest of the year.