Damn I don't post much here but people still want in denial that Ps5 will crush anything amuse me, denial is strong. Gonna be a rough years for you all, also rough years for Nintendo haters.

Stay safe & don't panic to much once Ps5 starts the absolute domination in 2022.

Maybe what's happened in Japan foretold what will happen everywhere else in the world. Switch will gobble up everything. None will be spared. One Switch to rule them all.

Hi @Kjartan This was an interesting fact that motivated me to check, Some years it is tough to determine what is the equivalent for this week, I did it with all the weeks that included Christmas eve sales (they must end after the 23rd).

Like you mentioned this was a pretty low week in sales in comparison with past years. There seem to be a few others below 1M but this seems to be the lowest after last year.

One important comparison is with the launch of the consoles, On the launch of the PS4 and XOne, the two companies combined for over 1.5M basically more than double than this time around. 

Hopefully this can be fully attributed to low stocks and the companies trying to have a record launch. 

I might be calculating different weeks than what you did, but in any case your message is very interesting to point out.

Hi @The_Liquid_Laser I don't have the region break down like you do, It is very interesting to see how little it dropped in Asia, I wonder if that has anything to do with China or maybe there are other explanations.

I also think the numbers could have been higher, but looking back at last year, this is what I found:

Last year this week dropped 40% so in a way  this year was a big improvement.

Denial is strong because your assumption that PS5 will crush everything is not based on any facts. There are no proofs that it will be the case. The only info about PS5 sales performance we have his that it currently outpacing PS4. But it doesn't prove that this will be the case moving forward. Xbox One was also outperforming 360 for quite some time initially but ended up selling almost 2 times less.

Why and how though?

What about the PS5 will lead to it demolishing PS4? It doesn't seem to have many advantages over PS4 in terms of factors that affect sales.

I'm not saying it can't potentially sell more, but I can't see any evidence to say with confidence that it will "demolish" its predecessor.

2023 seems like a good time to launch a Switch successor. Switch should still be selling well at that time but will be in decline being it will have entered its 7th year.

Ok, that is a good find.  Perhaps this is normal after all?  I think the portion of the week that happens before Dec 25 does make a difference.

Also, I believe Asia dropped only a little because of Japan.  Their holiday season seems to happen slightly later than much of the rest of the world.  That may be true in some other Asian cultures as well, but Japan contributes a very large portion of the sales in the Asian category.

Hi @The_Liquid_Laser I thought just like you did, that the amount of days before chirstmas does play a vital role in any growth for that week. Your comment made me want to explore that idea, I think you will like what I found. Basically I looked at every week that included christmas eve for every console, and measured its growth:

A very interesting pattern shows up, when there are at least 5 days before Christmas, almost all consoles increase on this week. And the relation is strictly proportional to the amount of days before. 2020 Seems to be the only exception to this rule. 

Like I mentioned before, a chart like this doesn't give us any answers, it just sparks curiosity and it brings the question of why would something like this happen?

Obviously stock shortages come to mind, or perhaps that the numbers could get revised later, or the lack of new games affected the week? There are many possibilities, what do you think could have happened?

Here is also a chart of days before vs growth (excluding this year):

This is probably why you and I (and probably others) were actually hoping for the NS to have higher sales than last week.

Anyways this shouldn't take away from the fact that having 1.2M units sold in one week isn't an amazing number, maybe the bar was just too high from the previous week.

I was looking at the PS4 and it seems like the next few weeks should be very interesting, They might start showing us a bit of the reality of the PS5 shortages. Right now it seems like PS is able to ship out around 300k consistently, therefore if that is true next week it will stop a 5 week streak that the PS4 has: