Do you think the Switch won't be replaced?

Beware of making overly confident premature predictions.

Back in 2017 the idea of Switch outselling the PS4 was considered far-fetched to the point of being laughable, yet now there's a very real chance it could happen. Likewise, for all we know in 3 years time we could be laughing at the idea that people ever ruled out the idea of PS5 outselling Switch.

The gaming industry is highly volatile and you never know how things will turn out.

true, but if they don't bungle this holiday up its less of a 'very real possibility' and more of a 'near certainty', considering sony just seems content to just hard drop the ps4 the same way nintendo did the past 3 or so gens in the home console space. no price cut, only cross gen titles. at the current price point buying a ps4 doesn't have enough meric RN

Man...those are some ballsy predictions. I do not think that the Switch will become the best selling console of all time. I'm thinking more like:

America > 45M
Europe < 35M
Japan > 30M
RotW < 20M

Total < 130

Do you think the Switch won't be replaced?

The problem with this argument is that you are predicting Switch will fall off of a cliff.  You said it in a very long post, but when someone follows your math, you are trying to argue for a cliff.  You are saying that Switch is at 71-79% of it's sales at 14 quarters.  That would put lifetime sales at less than 100m.  You are just making a big cliff argument.

The flaw with your reasoning is that you picked scenarios that are front loaded.   1) The systems you picked include an extra holiday compared to the Switch and 2) two of the systems you picked peaked during their second year and the other one peaked during it's third year.  Switch is obviously peaking this year.

Very roughly, a system is around 50% of shipments when it peaks, sometimes a few % points more and sometimes a few less.  Switch is about to have it's biggest holiday.  So, if we project shipments out to the end of the FY, then Switch's total will be around 85-90m.  Double that and conservatively Switch is going to sell 170m.  Break it down by region and NA and Japan are selling a bit faster than average while Europe and RoW are selling a bit slower than average.

You really need to evaluate your argument again.  You are projecting Switch to sell under 100m.

I expect Switch 2 in holiday 2024.

....................

Btw, shouldn't this thread be closed since, you know.... the user history? @Hiku

In no way am I suggesting the Switch will fall off a cliff or sell under 100m. Again, I chose consoles that peaked to give Switch the toughest competition, because that is what it takes to sell 170m.

Let's go with the easiest comparison of them all. Let's assume you are right and the Switch sells 90m by the end of the fiscal year. Let's give it the same sales pattern as the PS4, but an extra quarter so that the PS4 doesn't get an extra holiday season.

In summary

After 17 quarters (4 holiday seasons): Switch- 90m

After 16 quarters (4 holiday seasons): PS4- 67.5m

PS4 will eventually sell ~120m.

With the same multiplier the Switch sells ~160m. Even at the most optimistic, and giving Switch severe handicaps, it still doesn't sell 170m at the current rate.

So a full 7.5 years after the Switch. As for your prediction.

Americas- 38%

Europe- 36%

Will the console not decline? I am curious about your yearly estimates for those regions now.

I'll go for America only since we have USA numbers with a monthly base (which is roughly 85% of America sales)

2017 - 4.9m /4.9m
2018 - 5.6m / 11.5m
2019 - 6.5m / 17.0m
2020 - 10.5m / 27.5m
2021 - 11.0m / 38.5m
2022 - 8.0m / 46.5m
2023 - 6.0m / 52.5m
2024 - 3.0m / 55.5m (Switch 2 holiday)
2025 - 1.5m / 57.0m
Lifetime < 60 million

Rest of America another 10 million or so, which would put the total to < 70 million.

curl, you have been so wrong for so long that you aren't in a position to tell others what to do, except advise them to be not like you. It's not too early to make the call now, the PS5 won't sell more than Switch. Just like it wasn't too early in 2017 to make the call that Switch will sell more than the PS4. The "it's too early" line in a general sense usually comes from people who don't like how things look at the moment, so they want to buy some time in hopes that the state of things gets closer to what they want them to be.

The reasons why Switch was going to sell more than the PS4 could already be known in 2017. The biggest reason of them was and is that Nintendo holds a monopoly in the portable console market, so merely keeping that market flat from generation 8 (~90m between 3DS and Vita) was going to get Switch close to 100m units sold. From there it doesn't need a big vote of confidence that Nintendo can achieve a big enough presence in the home console market to get the necessary sales to beat the PS4 lifetime sales. After all, the Wii U did not represent the ceiling for Nintendo home console sales, it was a complete and utter failure with Nintendo making all the wrong decisions for what they wanted to go for with that console.

Likewise, we already know a lot about the PS5 in late 2020. It's a straight-forward follow-up to the PS4, so the chances that the PS5 will appeal to a broader audience than the PS4 are very slim. One opportunity for growth is to take consumers away from Xbox which appeals to the very same group of gamers, but what we know about Xbox Series X is that this gen multiplats aren't going to be notably inferior in terms of framerate and resolution, plus Microsoft has been expanding their first party studios; this makes it tough for Sony to convince Xbox One owners to go for the PS brand, because Microsoft ticked the most important boxes to retain what they had.

Growth for the PS brand is mandatory to challenge Switch sales because Switch sells better than the PS4, but the realistic options for growth are limited to developing markets growing bigger over time, because the PS5 itself doesn't have the appeal to grow in the matured markets. Chances are good that PS sales decline slightly in both Japan and North America, so the gains the PS5 makes in developing markets will be mostly offset by these decreases.

I can understand why a lot of people have trouble to make good predictions for Nintendo consoles, because Nintendo consoles can greatly differ in strategy from one generation to the next one, but Sony and Microsoft make it pretty easy. The PS5 isn't a mysterious entity where it's hard to say what it is and what it will be, so the general consensus for its lifetime sales is bound to be in the correct ballpark, unlike for Switch where the consensus was off by miles.