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Forums - Sales Discussion - Will the Nintendo Switch overtake the PS4 in terms of sales worldwide?

It depends on whether Nintendo replaces with an all new system or not. If Nintendo's more powerful upgrades for the Switch are considered an all new system then it will not catch up with PS4. However, if Nintendo's more powerful systems are just called "New Nintendo Switch" or something to that effect then it will go way past ps4 in terms of sales.



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V-r0cK said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

That may be why you are projecting 100m total.  You haven't sat down and done any of the math.  Check out the actual numbers and then see if you still think Switch will only reach 100m.

Also you may not be aware that production is actually not in decline.  Sales are up YoY.  Even though Switches are in short supply in Japan and North America, sales are still up YoY for each week.  Here is a good reference thread for this year.
https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/241660/ps4xbons-2019-vs-2020-week-27-numbers-added-ending-july-5th/1/

I've checked the numbers too, but why dont we just wait and find out at the end of the Switches life cycle then.  Yes sales are up YoY, but sales will eventually not be up you know that too right?  

Also I've done the math but you cant do math on the change of market. Think of all the time where you hear companies didnt meet their quarterly/yearly expectations etc.., they did the math but yet they still ended up short. But I guess you haven't sat down and done any business.

Seems like you're trying to go out of your way with me just because I believe it wont hit 100M.  You know others on here also posted that they don't think itll hit 100M why not talk to them?  Was it cause I burned you the last time we had a discussion and that even a mod had to step in and put you in your place ;P 

Look, I'm down for more discussion but 1) this is just my opinion that I dont think it'll hit 100M, you can't argue opinion but you can argue a fact, and 2) you shouldn't say stuff like "Also you may not be aware that production is actually not in decline." when you can just simply google it and see that Nintendo did had to stop/slow down production, so not sure what you call that then.

But to keep this short as I mentioned at the beginning, why dont we just wait and find out at the end of the Switches life cycle then.  Or when it hits 100M feel free to msg me and I will gladly tell you that I was wrong :)

What the hell are you even talking about?  LOL.



Bofferbrauer2 said:
hunter_alien said:

Well that was the 3DS as well and the system barely chugged along in it's last 2 viable years, and in all honestly, that was mostly on the Pokemon hype that was created with Pokemon Go!

The Switch is in the middle of its lifecycle. We have already seen that price cuts don't necessarily affect Nintendo products in the same way as they do other systems, hence why the 2DS or GC for that matter never really took off. I am fully expecting it to double these numbers LT, but I honestly doubt the 2nd generation franchise titles will push as many systems as the 1st gen titles, for the simple fact that most people who wanted them will have one already. 

Of course, only time will tell how this will all play out, but it sure reminds me of the hype the Wii had, and how many people were expecting it to easily break the 200 million mark. At the end of the day, I have only to win on this, as a Switch owner, so I hope that it will have a massive install base and as much support as it can possibly get. 

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/444458/switch-vs-3ds-sales-comparisonswitch-lead-continues-to-grow-in-june-2020/

Switch already leads the 3DS by 16M, and advantage that is growing very fast. By end of the Year the Switch should lead by about 25M and come very close to the 3DS's total sales figures.

The reason why the 3DS crashed and burned so early was because it needed a massive pricecut to get off the ground, which in turn meant that Nintendo didn't have much leverage left in terms of pricecuts later down the road. The 3DS still got cheaper, but the differences were so small that it was barely felt by the consumers and thus had very limited effect, just enough for making sure the sales numbers didn't drop too fast. These are all things that are not true for the Switch.

The 2DS was hideous and lacked the additional power of the then-already released New 3DS. Of course it didn't do well like that. Had Nintendo released the new 2DS XL alongside or shortly after the new 3DS XL and not bothered with the original 2DS, I'm pretty sure it could have had much more of an impact on the 3DS sales than it did.

GC pricecut didn't work because at the time Nintendo still tried to compete with Sony head-on, and against the PS2 at that. That simply couldn't work with the image it had despite doing everything they could to change the image by buying exclusivity deals with many mature games, only for them to rather pay the fine for breach of contract than to linger around on the unsuccessful Gamecube.

Long story short, you just can't compare their situation with pricecuts to the one the Switch is in.

Yeah, you are probably right about this. The situation is not fully comparable, though all that we can do with historic data is to draw parallels Still the Switch needs to do 75 million more units from this point on to clearly outsell what the PS4 will do LT, and honestly I am still highly skeptical about that. That's the entire LT sales of the 3DS after all and that on an already very impressive 60 million install base to boot. But man, can you imagine how many awesome games will we get if it ends up doing 140 million units and gets support for like 8 years?



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Slownenberg said:
hunter_alien said:

Of course, only time will tell how this will all play out, but it sure reminds me of the hype the Wii had, and how many people were expecting it to easily break the 200 million mark. 

That doesn't make sense, given the context. Wii had like 3 years of insane sales because of its blue ocean strategy - meaning tens of millions of systems were bought by non-gamers, who then only bought a few titles, and that non-gamer market lost interest after a few years once motion controls were no longer some flashy novel thing, so the Wii's sales dropped pretty dramatically at that point, as the PS360 finally got down to reasonable prices. That isn't remotely what is going on today with the Switch. Wii and Switch are not comparable at all, any glance at game sales will tell you as much.

Yeah, that's true, just wanted to point out the idea, that how drastically can things change in 2 years time for any system. While this was by no means and apples-to-apples comparison it does show how quickly sales trends can fluctuate even in one generation. 



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YanisFromFrance said:

Will it exceed the PS4 in terms of sales?

Does the Switch have another 60-70m sales left in it....  PS4 is going over 130m imo.
Its a tough question, it *might* get close.

Switch has had more than 40 months now on the market.
Sales are usually best in the early half of nintendo life cycles.
So even if it has another 40 months of life in it, it might strugle to hit another 60m unit sales.

Ontop of that Nintendo themselves have been talking about a Switch 2, resently.
I know its still a few years out probably...

However I suspect Switch will be replaced before it has a chance to reach PS4 sales numbers.



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hunter_alien said:

Well that was the 3DS as well and the system barely chugged along in it's last 2 viable years, and in all honestly, that was mostly on the Pokemon hype that was created with Pokemon Go!

The Switch is in the middle of its lifecycle. We have already seen that price cuts don't necessarily affect Nintendo products in the same way as they do other systems, hence why the 2DS or GC for that matter never really took off. I am fully expecting it to double these numbers LT, but I honestly doubt the 2nd generation franchise titles will push as many systems as the 1st gen titles, for the simple fact that most people who wanted them will have one already. 

Of course, only time will tell how this will all play out, but it sure reminds me of the hype the Wii had, and how many people were expecting it to easily break the 200 million mark. At the end of the day, I have only to win on this, as a Switch owner, so I hope that it will have a massive install base and as much support as it can possibly get. 

That's absolutely wrong of course and there is not data to back this up. The Gamecube did see a large increase in sales when its pice was dropped to 99$, it just wasn't a popular product. The Wii had its largest Christmas ever in late 2009 when the price was dropped to 199$. 3DS sales exploded after the price cut. It's just a matter of dimensions: The Xbox One won't start selling 25m units a year if Microsoft cuts the price in half. The PS Vita wouldn't be at 100m now with a price cut.

As for the second bolded part: Who predicted this, exactly? I'm sure people predicted Nintendo wouldn't drop the console so early and it would sell more than "just" 100m units. But "easily break 200 million"? Only John Lucas predicted something like this and literally everyone disagreed. 



JRPGfan said:
YanisFromFrance said:

Will it exceed the PS4 in terms of sales?

Does the Switch have another 60-70m sales left in it....  PS4 is going over 130m imo.
Its a tough question, it *might* get close.

Switch has had more than 40 months now on the market.
Sales are usually best in the early half of nintendo life cycles.
So even if it has another 40 months of life in it, it might strugle to hit another 60m unit sales.

Ontop of that Nintendo themselves have been talking about a Switch 2, resently.
I know its still a few years out probably...

However I suspect Switch will be replaced before it has a chance to reach PS4 sales numbers.

The Switch is currently in its fourth year on the market and sales are higher than ever. So how is this different to PS4 sales? 

Yes, Nintendo have talked about Switch 2 recently. They specifically, once again, reiterated that the Switch 2 is still a far way off and that the Switch will have a longer than normal lifecycle. 



Yes.



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Louie said:
JRPGfan said:

Does the Switch have another 60-70m sales left in it....  PS4 is going over 130m imo.
Its a tough question, it *might* get close.

Switch has had more than 40 months now on the market.
Sales are usually best in the early half of nintendo life cycles.
So even if it has another 40 months of life in it, it might strugle to hit another 60m unit sales.

Ontop of that Nintendo themselves have been talking about a Switch 2, resently.
I know its still a few years out probably...

However I suspect Switch will be replaced before it has a chance to reach PS4 sales numbers.

The Switch is currently in its fourth year on the market and sales are higher than ever. So how is this different to PS4 sales? 

Yes, Nintendo have talked about Switch 2 recently. They specifically, once again, reiterated that the Switch 2 is still a far way off and that the Switch will have a longer than normal lifecycle. 

With the exception of the PS3, playstations usually have long legs... ei they keep selling at steady paces for along time, even after next gen starts.
With Nintendo often when a new gen starts, its just a abrubt halting, ei sales drop more drastically (when a new gen starts).

Yes Switch 2 is probably 2+ years away.



Louie said:
hunter_alien said:

Well that was the 3DS as well and the system barely chugged along in it's last 2 viable years, and in all honestly, that was mostly on the Pokemon hype that was created with Pokemon Go!

The Switch is in the middle of its lifecycle. We have already seen that price cuts don't necessarily affect Nintendo products in the same way as they do other systems, hence why the 2DS or GC for that matter never really took off. I am fully expecting it to double these numbers LT, but I honestly doubt the 2nd generation franchise titles will push as many systems as the 1st gen titles, for the simple fact that most people who wanted them will have one already. 

Of course, only time will tell how this will all play out, but it sure reminds me of the hype the Wii had, and how many people were expecting it to easily break the 200 million mark. At the end of the day, I have only to win on this, as a Switch owner, so I hope that it will have a massive install base and as much support as it can possibly get. 

That's absolutely wrong of course and there is not data to back this up. The Gamecube did see a large increase in sales when its pice was dropped to 99$, it just wasn't a popular product. The Wii had its largest Christmas ever in late 2009 when the price was dropped to 199$. 3DS sales exploded after the price cut. It's just a matter of dimensions: The Xbox One won't start selling 25m units a year if Microsoft cuts the price in half. The PS Vita wouldn't be at 100m now with a price cut.

As for the second bolded part: Who predicted this, exactly? I'm sure people predicted Nintendo wouldn't drop the console so early and it would sell more than "just" 100m units. But "easily break 200 million"? Only John Lucas predicted something like this and literally everyone disagreed. 

With the sole exception of the Wii and DS no modern Nintendo system was helped late in the lifecycle by a price cut, and let's face it, those are the exceptions by every metric. Nintendo knows this hence they usually maintain the price higher and release more entry-level models down the line. For the GC and 3DS the early price cuts that did help were survival price cut. It was either that or game over for the systems. Those are facts and there is plenty of data that proves this.

By the time the Switch gets any meaningful price cut I doubt that anyone who wanted one won't already have one. The price was never the issue with the Switch so I doubt that a price cut will do more than push the very price-conscious, late-gen adopters to pull the trigger, but those won't make the system sell another 60 million.

On the other hand, by starting at a usually higher pricepoint, MS and Sony always managed to generate a bit more hype with price cuts. Instantly the system that was out of reach at 400 or even 600 bucks, is now 100 dollars cheaper, and again, the 7th generation was a perfect example for this frontline.

All in all, by the time the Switch will rely on a price cut to drive sales, will be the point where Nintendo will feel that there is not a strong-enough release schedule to push the system on its own, hence it won't really affect the final outcome all that much. Now, if instantly the Switch Lite would be available for 100$ that could change the situation, but why would Nintendo sacrifice their profit margin with a move like that? Somebody who can only afford a Switch at 100$ will most definitely not be a huge software purchaser, so yeah, we can count out a scenario like this in the near future.



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