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Forums - Sales Discussion - Switch can't/won't outsell DS because...........

The_Liquid_Laser on 20 February 2020

Shadow1980 said:

[...]
However, we do know the following two facts:

1) The Switch's YoY increases have been declining and, regardless of the reasons, Nintendo systems experiencing a multi-quarter growth period see said growth slow and then flip over into YoY declines, which initiates the post-peak period of the system's life.

[...]

I believe this depends on whether you are looking at US/Americas data or Worldwide data. 

Switch shipments for first 9 months of fiscal year

Apr. 1 to Dec 31 Americas YoY % increase World YoY % increase
2017 4.74 12.13
2018 5.8 22% 14.48 19%
2019 6.85 18% 17.74 23%

The YoY increase was actually greater for the first 9 months of the current fiscal year.  Not only has Switch not peaked but it's growth rate is increasing too.  The Americas tell a different story.  One might guess Switch is slowing down in the Americas but not the rest of the world.  But what I really think is that Smash Bros is simply really popular in the US and that makes 2018 proportionally higher in the Americas compared to the worldwide total.  Either way, Switch sales have most definitely not peaked nor are they anywhere close.

Shadow1980 said: 
"And as for the total size of the market, that's such a nebulous quantity as to be useless. After three generations, we can surmise that the total combined global market for PlayStation & Xbox is in the 170-180M range, something that's been pretty damn consistent so far (even the final WW total for combined PS4+XBO sales will likely end up in that range). But when it comes to Nintendo, they've been highly volatile. They went from the GameCube (bad sales) to the Wii (good sales) to the Wii U (bad sales) and now to the Switch (good sales). Even their handhelds have not shown much consistency. And this is all before taking into account regional differences in sales. And counting the home console and old handheld market separately is even less useful. We have only a vague idea what the overlap between Nintendo home console owners and PS/Xbox owners are, and we have even less of an idea what the overlap between what, say, Wii and DS owners were, or DS owners and PS/Xbox owners."

There are lots of industries out there where markets are actually measured and analyzed.  Come to these forums and people act like it's voodoo.

The home console market is pretty easy to measure because of Generation 6.  PS2 + XBox + Gamecube = 158m + 25m + 22m = 205m.  Now looking at Generation 8 we are far enough along to get good estimates, PS4 + XB1 + WiiU = 130m + 50m + 14m = 194m.  The market size hasn't changed much (net) since Generation 6.  The Wii temporarily gained and lost a lot of customers, which might confuse people.  But comparing Generation 6 and 8 there is not much change.  The handheld market is really easy to measure 3DS + Vita = 75m + 16m = 91m.

If you combine the home and handheld market that is a potential of 285m (194m + 91m) sales.  Given, I do know there is some overlap, but it isn't so big of a deal as people say, since it is common for a household to own more than one handheld.  I.e. a household that owns a PS4 and a 3DS can easily buy 2 Switches as well.  However, lets just take the most conservative case anyway which is that there is 100% overlap between the home and handheld market and each household only buys one system.  Even in that case Switch sells to the whole 91m handheld market plus to some percentage of the remaining 103m (194m - 91m) in the home market.  Even in the extremely conservative case Switch has the potential to pass the DS.

That is why it is really too early to say it's impossible at this point.  I personally have reason to believe that it is not just possible, but the likely result.  However, I am just trying to present the idea that it is possible here.  The market size indicates it is possible.  And the current sales data won't give a strong indication who is right until after Switch has hit it's peak year.  What is clear is that Switch sales are still accelerating.  It's too early to call based on data alone.



curl-6 bet me that PS5 + X|S sales would reach 56m before year end 2023 and he was right.
My Bet With curl-6

My Threads:
Master Thread, Game of the Year/Decade
Switch Will Be #1 All Time
Zelda Will Outsell Mario (Achieved)
How Much Will MH Rise sell?
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jonathanalis on 20 February 2020
victor83fernandes said:
Radek said:

Yes it can run GTA 5 and COD but neither of these publishers want to release these games on it so...

People are missing the point, most people are upgrading to 4K, in fact you almost cant find a 1080p TV anymore.

Then, GTA5 is from last gen, it doesn't hold up well compared to modern games, gta5 is full of jaggies compared with modern open world games.

Then the ps5/xbox series X will be another big jump, further eliminating jaggies.

By next year, the graphics will be way ahead of the switch, switch will still be great for portable games, but not for full console games as those will look leagues ahead on the main consoles, therefore no one will buy a 720p game on switch if they can have it in 2160p on the main consoles, that's like 9x the pixel count, imagine that, and then the main consoles will have better effects, performance and AA, add to that the switch could have maximum 64gb space on the memory on the SD, the new home consoles can do 100GB on 2 discs (2 discs are way cheaper than a 64gb SD).

The switch is fine for ports and some people might trade graphics for portability, but next gen the difference will be far too massive, I personally think it already is, playing witcher 3 on my xbox X is a huge difference to the switch, its like a completely different game all together, so imagine next gen. 3rd party developers will be forced to leave the switch, unless they want to make exclusive games for it.

So, sales will start to slow a lot next year when people witness next gen graphics.

The switch will be left behind just like the Wii was when the ps4/One released. Graphics were acceptable against the ps3/360, but not acceptable compared to the ps4/One

What a nonsense.

People didnt stop buying wiis because of ps4/one graphics. It just became less attractive, specially for it main demographics, along with the lack of support. And people dont buy switch because graphics of xbox one x. I bet you didnt buy the switch to play the witcher. They buy because they can play mario kart, zelda, smash bros, and even ring fit adventure (this one exclusively on tv), the main selling point of switch has nothing to do with the pixel count of switch against any competitor.

Yet, It is likely that switch start to decline after ps5/series x launch, because it was a coincidence that the launch of these consoles is around the time switch gonna peak. But would be a mere correlation, not the cause. 



javi741 on 21 February 2020
Shadow1980 said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

The main problem with this argument is that you can compare the DS to the first three years of the PS2 and get a similar story.  

Data has not yet shown when Switch will peak.  If we are going by sales so far this year, Switch has not peaked yet comparing YoY Jan-Feb sales to last year (worldwide).  Data has also not given us an indication yet of what Switch's legs will be like.  Going by data alone is going to give an incomplete picture.

On the other hand we can measure market size.  If you combine all of the handheld gamers and all of the home gamers, then that is a huge potential market for Switch.  It only needs to sell to about 55% of that market in order to beat the DS.  On top of that the home version is actually more popular than the Lite version.  Home gamers are going for Switch in a big way and handheld gamers love it too.  Switch has a lot more growth potential than even the DS had.

That is why saying the Switch can't possibly outsell the DS is calling this way too early.  

What's the PS2 have to do with this?

In any case, we can look at older systems to look at trends to see when a system experiencing a period of growth might pass its peak and enter its decline phase (note: the N64 and 3DS were omitted from these charts because they peaked within their first year).

Except for the GameCube (for reasons I'll explain in a bit), every Nintendo system had a period of at least a few quarters where they experienced year-over-year growth (with the DS it was 14 straight quarters of YoY growth, the best such streak for any system ever), but that growth slowed and eventually flipped over into YoY declines. At no point in any Nintendo system released in the past 20 years have we seen a Nintendo system experience a period of growth, then some declines, and then another multi-quarter period of significant growth. It just doesn't happen. Once we see two or three quarters of YoY declines, that has always heralded the start of the terminal decline phase of a Nintendo system's life.

The GameCube was an odd duck because it had a price cut very early that gave a good boost to Q2 sales, but that had petered out, hence the YoY declines in Q2 & Q3 2003. Then it had another price cut in Sept. 2003 that gave Q4 that year a big boost, but that boost was even shorter-lived that the boost caused by the price cut.


Going back to the Switch, we can see that it already has had five straight quarters of growth. Except for a brief reversal in Q3 2019 (thanks to the release of the Lite), we've seen a general downward trend in the amount of YoY growth. While we don't have actual numbers yet, the Switch is known to be down already in January, only its second month where it was down YoY since Nov. 2018 (the other month was July 2019). Now, January could just be statistical noise, or it could be a result of Jan. 2019 having gotten a residual boost from Smash. It's possible that February and March could make up for it by being up YoY. I already admitted in my previous post that it's still too early in the year to tell for sure if the Switch is post-peak or not.

However, we do know the following two facts:

1) The Switch's YoY increases have been declining and, regardless of the reasons, Nintendo systems experiencing a multi-quarter growth period see said growth slow and then flip over into YoY declines, which initiates the post-peak period of the system's life.

2) The Switch's YoY increases have not been of the same magnitude of growth that the DS experienced. It's not even close. They're not even in the same league as the Wii's YoY increases during its growth period. They're more in line with those of the GBA.

Based on these facts, I simply do not see a multi-year increase in Switch sales in the cards (there's also no precedent for a multi-year period of flat-sales for Nintendo systems). And without rapid growth over the next two years, that gap between the Switch and the DS will grow and fast. Is it possible that we could see continued and significant growth out of the Switch? Yes. Is it likely? No. Could it potentially meet or beat the DS? Not a chance.

And as for the total size of the market, that's such a nebulous quantity as to be useless. After three generations, we can surmise that the total combined global market for PlayStation & Xbox is in the 170-180M range, something that's been pretty damn consistent so far (even the final WW total for combined PS4+XBO sales will likely end up in that range). But when it comes to Nintendo, they've been highly volatile. They went from the GameCube (bad sales) to the Wii (good sales) to the Wii U (bad sales) and now to the Switch (good sales). Even their handhelds have not shown much consistency. And this is all before taking into account regional differences in sales. And counting the home console and old handheld market separately is even less useful. We have only a vague idea what the overlap between Nintendo home console owners and PS/Xbox owners are, and we have even less of an idea what the overlap between what, say, Wii and DS owners were, or DS owners and PS/Xbox owners.

We have no idea that Nintendo's total potential market size is, and it really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what the sales data says, and as more time passes we'll start to get an ever more clear picture of what the Switch's trajectory will be.

In the U.S Switch's year over year growth is slightly lower, however worldwide the Switch is still growing in sales based on 2019. If we were to take VGchartz numbers though so far for 2020, The Switch is likely experiencing around a 20% growth YoY which is similar to last year despite not having a game in Jan-Feb of 2020 unlike 2019 where NSMBU released. So it's hard to argue the Switch's growth is slowing down when only looking at U.S numbers since worldwide the Switch is still growing slightly. The only thing that might slow the momentum down in 2020 is the shortages as a result of the coronavirus.

It's still unlikely it'll come close to the DS's sales because the Switch doesn't really have that casual gamer appeal like the DS did, but the Switch's growth certainly isn't slowing down.



javi741 on 21 February 2020
Shadow1980 said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

The main problem with this argument is that you can compare the DS to the first three years of the PS2 and get a similar story.  

Data has not yet shown when Switch will peak.  If we are going by sales so far this year, Switch has not peaked yet comparing YoY Jan-Feb sales to last year (worldwide).  Data has also not given us an indication yet of what Switch's legs will be like.  Going by data alone is going to give an incomplete picture.

On the other hand we can measure market size.  If you combine all of the handheld gamers and all of the home gamers, then that is a huge potential market for Switch.  It only needs to sell to about 55% of that market in order to beat the DS.  On top of that the home version is actually more popular than the Lite version.  Home gamers are going for Switch in a big way and handheld gamers love it too.  Switch has a lot more growth potential than even the DS had.

That is why saying the Switch can't possibly outsell the DS is calling this way too early.  

What's the PS2 have to do with this?

In any case, we can look at older systems to look at trends to see when a system experiencing a period of growth might pass its peak and enter its decline phase (note: the N64 and 3DS were omitted from these charts because they peaked within their first year).

Except for the GameCube (for reasons I'll explain in a bit), every Nintendo system had a period of at least a few quarters where they experienced year-over-year growth (with the DS it was 14 straight quarters of YoY growth, the best such streak for any system ever), but that growth slowed and eventually flipped over into YoY declines. At no point in any Nintendo system released in the past 20 years have we seen a Nintendo system experience a period of growth, then some declines, and then another multi-quarter period of significant growth. It just doesn't happen. Once we see two or three quarters of YoY declines, that has always heralded the start of the terminal decline phase of a Nintendo system's life.

The GameCube was an odd duck because it had a price cut very early that gave a good boost to Q2 sales, but that had petered out, hence the YoY declines in Q2 & Q3 2003. Then it had another price cut in Sept. 2003 that gave Q4 that year a big boost, but that boost was even shorter-lived that the boost caused by the price cut.


Going back to the Switch, we can see that it already has had five straight quarters of growth. Except for a brief reversal in Q3 2019 (thanks to the release of the Lite), we've seen a general downward trend in the amount of YoY growth. While we don't have actual numbers yet, the Switch is known to be down already in January, only its second month where it was down YoY since Nov. 2018 (the other month was July 2019). Now, January could just be statistical noise, or it could be a result of Jan. 2019 having gotten a residual boost from Smash. It's possible that February and March could make up for it by being up YoY. I already admitted in my previous post that it's still too early in the year to tell for sure if the Switch is post-peak or not.

However, we do know the following two facts:

1) The Switch's YoY increases have been declining and, regardless of the reasons, Nintendo systems experiencing a multi-quarter growth period see said growth slow and then flip over into YoY declines, which initiates the post-peak period of the system's life.

2) The Switch's YoY increases have not been of the same magnitude of growth that the DS experienced. It's not even close. They're not even in the same league as the Wii's YoY increases during its growth period. They're more in line with those of the GBA.

Based on these facts, I simply do not see a multi-year increase in Switch sales in the cards (there's also no precedent for a multi-year period of flat-sales for Nintendo systems). And without rapid growth over the next two years, that gap between the Switch and the DS will grow and fast. Is it possible that we could see continued and significant growth out of the Switch? Yes. Is it likely? No. Could it potentially meet or beat the DS? Not a chance.

And as for the total size of the market, that's such a nebulous quantity as to be useless. After three generations, we can surmise that the total combined global market for PlayStation & Xbox is in the 170-180M range, something that's been pretty damn consistent so far (even the final WW total for combined PS4+XBO sales will likely end up in that range). But when it comes to Nintendo, they've been highly volatile. They went from the GameCube (bad sales) to the Wii (good sales) to the Wii U (bad sales) and now to the Switch (good sales). Even their handhelds have not shown much consistency. And this is all before taking into account regional differences in sales. And counting the home console and old handheld market separately is even less useful. We have only a vague idea what the overlap between Nintendo home console owners and PS/Xbox owners are, and we have even less of an idea what the overlap between what, say, Wii and DS owners were, or DS owners and PS/Xbox owners.

We have no idea that Nintendo's total potential market size is, and it really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what the sales data says, and as more time passes we'll start to get an ever more clear picture of what the Switch's trajectory will be.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/442508/year-on-year-sales-amp-market-share-charts-february-15-2020/

Here is an article on the year-on-year sales of the Switch. I calculated it and in 2019 YoY covering the same time period, Switch's sales grew 17%. In 2020 however Switch's sales grew 21% YoY over the same time period despite having a weak Jan-Feb so far, which shows that the Switch is still growing globally in sales.



javi741 on 21 February 2020

I think the main reason why the Switch won't catch up to the DS in sales is because the Switch doesn't really have that casual appeal like the DS fan at the time. The DS released at a time before the smartphones and tablets became mainstream and most games on phones at the time were limited and shit with no real app store. At the time the DS was really the only legit option for casuals to play legit casual games like Brain Age and Nintendogs, and the high sales of those games prove how much of the DS install base were casual gamers. The DS also appealed to casuals because of it's touch screen capability, which was a feature that was very novel and interesting to casuals when it released in 2004 and was something that most mainstream cellphones couldn't offered at the time. The DS pretty much filled the gap for the casual gamers in the market before smartphone games took over.

The Switch doesn't really have that casual appeal like the DS had, most of the casual gamers who got a DS who want to play simple cheap games have completely moved on to mobile gaming and they don't feel the need to spend 300-200$ for a Switch when they're happy with gaming on their smartphones. And while the Switch may be appealing to gamers since you can play and detach joycons and play full console games anywhere on the TV or on the go, the Switch doesn't really have that appeal to attract casual gamers like the DS and Wii did where their game changing innovation and simple games filled the gap for casual gamers before smartphones hit. Nintendo has tried to appeal to more casual gamers on the Switch with stuff like Nintendo Labo, Ring Fit Adventure, 1-2 Switch. However, those games never really caught on as Nintendo had hoped as Nintendo Labo likely ended up selling disappointing for Nintendo since Nintendo didn't even mention Labo's sales in their latest financial report and while Ring Fit was a mild success selling 2.17M in about 2 months, it still would get outsold by Nintendo's more hardcore titles released around the same time period like Luigi's Mansion 3 selling 5.37M in 2 months and Links Awakening selling around 4M in 3 Months. And 1-2 Switch ended up being one of the most forgettable titles on the Switch as majority of it's 3M sales came within it's launch period where 1-2 Switch released with little competition from other games and usually early buyers purchase everything. So it's clear that those games haven't really caught on to the casual gamer crowd that the DS had as it seems like casuals aren't willling to spend 300+$ just to try out labo or Ring Fit. Maybe Animal Crossing will help the Switch appeal to the more casual crowd which I wouldn't doubt it much since Animal Crossing sold extremely well on the 3DS, selling nearly 13M copies. But even then I don't think Animal Crossing will be enough to appeal to the casual audience entirely.



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DonFerrari on 21 February 2020

Because it isn't DS.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari on 21 February 2020
Dulfite said:

Operating Income/Profit is the ONLY thing that matters. At the end of the day, if they have more money in their bank account by selling less but also consolidating their teams down to cost effective sizes and reducing redundancies, it's a win. Selling 100 mil of one device and one set of teams you have to pay salaries to and advertise for is better than selling 250il devices where you have to pay double on everything due to different games/markets if they have more profit at the end of the year.

Nintendo has been building towards the long game (10+ years from now) while we all obsess over the short term game. They know what's coming. Consolidation and differentiation are the only things that will keep people buying their hardware when the legion that is Microsoft/Amazon/Apple/Google has their own cloud streaming platforms. Unless Sony drastically changed their model I don't know how their gaming division can survive ten years from now. Who will want to buy a box that can only play on a TV when they could cloud stream it? I'm not speaking about now but rather the 2030-2040's when cloud gaming will actually function properly.

Yes Sony is doomed.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Mr.GameCrazy on 21 February 2020

I honestly don't see the Switch outselling the Nintendo DS, but I think it'll definitely outsell the 3DS. I think there's a chance it will outsell the Wii.



Chicho on 21 February 2020
Mr.GameCrazy said:
I honestly don't see the Switch outselling the Nintendo DS, but I think it'll definitely outsell the 3DS. I think there's a chance it will outsell the Wii.

The 3DS is a given at this point. It is at 75m but it is not sellin a lot this is probably the last year. Swicth is just over 50m so by this time next year should beat 3ds, but even if it doesnt it will do it by next years holiday season



Eagle367 on 21 February 2020

People always try to rationalize why some consoles did so amazing or so damn bad but after a certain amount of work you do, it's a random mix of people's emotions and some factors you can't control. That's why the first year, in my opinion, is so important because that's when you control the narrative and after that it becomes really hard to change direction. And the direction the switch is set on is to be successful but not as successful as the DS unless Ninty does something really amazing.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also