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Forums - Sales Discussion - The Switch shipped 139.36M by 31.12.2023. LT sales expectations?

 

Lifetime sales expectations

Under 150M 2 11.76%
 
150-155M 6 35.29%
 
155-158M 1 5.88%
 
158-165M 7 41.18%
 
165M+ 1 5.88%
 
Total:17
yo33331 said:
Norion said:

My issue with that projection is I don't see why sales would decline by 40% next year. That sort of decline is what you'd expect to see the year the successor releases and 2022 is of course not when that is happening. A 30% decline is the highest I can see it reasonably going.

I just have the feeling it will drop to 15M .. I can say many reasons why, but the feeling is also there we will see

I think the combination of the OLED model and big software releases like Splatoon 3 and BOTW 2 assuming neither of those get delayed into 2023 will be enough to prevent a really big decline next year but we'll have a decent idea of what the Switch will sell in 2022 by say April so best to wait instead of having an unnecessary argument about it yeah.



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During its first 18 first quarters, Switch moved 89 million copies

Meanwhile Wii moved 86 million copies in 18 quarters

The key difference is, on Q18 Wii was selling 1,37 million

Switch is selling 4,45

Wii moved another 15 million after Q8. If Switch start dropping off a cliff next quarter even 130 million would the absolute worst case scenario

Even if Switch keeps decreasing 25% YoY compared to 2020 (I will even make a 35% decrease for Q19 because Jul-Sep last years was monstruous), this would make:

Q19: 4,4
Q20: 8,7
Q21: 3,54

=16,6 million until March 2022, total 105,6 million copies. Then Switch would need to decrease at least another 40% YoY despite of its software pipeline and new model

Q22: 2,67
Q19: 2,64
Q20: 5,22
Q21: 2,12

= 12,65 until March 2023, total 118 million sales. Followed by another 40% decline YoY to make ~8 million/126 million for March 2024 and then 130 million lifetime

If this is your bet, you'd better start praying because the odds of those numbers turn to be real aren't big



yo33331 said:

PS4 was selling way better than the PS3 too. But it is dying worse than PS3. In those days, consoles are dying way faster than it was 10 years or 15 years ago.

Yeah, but hardly 4 times better than PS3 launched aligned

For 130 million be anything close to be real the cliff need to have started already. If Switch end March 2022 selling anything around 110-112 million you can say goodbye to any prediction bellow 130 million



yo33331 said:

It started, don't you see ? it is hanging under 350k since May, and it's already down to 300k per week, I expect to go to 270-280K per week by end of august.
But this is still not a big cliff. It's coming in 2022.

It declined, but this christmas season will be bigger than last year. New models are always guaranteed to push sales, 2021 will be flat YoY compared to 2020, or at least it will be a negligible decline (5-10% decline). Switch is currently tracking 27% ahead of 2016 PS4 (the year when Pro Model launched), and PS4 moved 16.5 million shipments in the next 3 quarters (August 2016-March 2017). I see no reason for Switch not beat these numbers

It will likely finish current fiscal year with 110 million give-or-take and then hopefully you will finally understand how this 130 million prediction never made any sense



some people say its reaching its saturation point... but switch is starting to gain traction in markets nintendo was never strong in, like the rest of asia , china, and europe, that PS pretty much already had in thier portfolio since the PS2.in these markets the switch officially launched around 1 to 2 years late... which can be the difference maker here.

especially in places like china where its heavy on censorship, nintendo being mostly first party is a pretty big advantage.



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Dulfite said:

I just can't agree with these numbers lol. We just got evidence that the Switch is already slowing down considerably compared to last year, and that will only continue moreso into the holidays and next year. 

No we didn't.  Sales so far this year are about the same as last year.  If you compare only Q2 2020 to Q2 2021, then yeah 2021 is down, because 2020 sales were all about Animal Crossing, and that was the time period when Animal Crossing was really driving sales.  Nintendo's quarterly report said that Animal Crossing was 40% of all of their first party sales during Q2 of 2020!  In 2020 Switch sales really shot up, but the most amazing time of year was during Q2.  So if you only compare Q2 for this year and last year, then you are going to come to some pretty messed up conclusions. 

On the other hand, what games did Nintendo have for holiday 2020?  Nothing really.  They had Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.  This year they are going to have Pokemon and a new Switch model.  Pokemon alone is enough to make sales up YoY.  Throw in a new model, and there should be no question that sales are going to be up this year.  



yo33331 said:
Norion said:

Here is a purposefully pessimistic projection I made earlier this year.

2021: 25/102

2022: 19/121

2023: 12/133

2024: 5/138

2025+: 2/140

Mine is something like this:

2021: 25/102M

2022: 15/117M

2023: 8/125M

2024: 3/128M

2025+: 1-2/~130M

Totally unrealistic. That's the Wii cliff ^2.



The_Liquid_Laser said:
Dulfite said:

I just can't agree with these numbers lol. We just got evidence that the Switch is already slowing down considerably compared to last year, and that will only continue moreso into the holidays and next year. 

No we didn't.  Sales so far this year are about the same as last year.  If you compare only Q2 2020 to Q2 2021, then yeah 2021 is down, because 2020 sales were all about Animal Crossing, and that was the time period when Animal Crossing was really driving sales.  Nintendo's quarterly report said that Animal Crossing was 40% of all of their first party sales during Q2 of 2020!  In 2020 Switch sales really shot up, but the most amazing time of year was during Q2.  So if you only compare Q2 for this year and last year, then you are going to come to some pretty messed up conclusions. 

On the other hand, what games did Nintendo have for holiday 2020?  Nothing really.  They had Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.  This year they are going to have Pokemon and a new Switch model.  Pokemon alone is enough to make sales up YoY.  Throw in a new model, and there should be no question that sales are going to be up this year.  

Aside from HW: AoC and a massive amount of AA and A level games, 2020 had the following popular games:

-Super Mario 3D All Stars (shipped over 9 million by 3/31/21)

-Doom Eternal (not sure how much this one sold)

-Clubhouse 51 (over 3 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-Immortals Fenyx Rising (not sure how much this sold but Ubisoft was pleased publically with Switch sales)

-Paper Mario The Oragami King (over 3 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-MarioKart Live Circuit (over 1 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-Ori and the Will of the Wisps (no clue what this sold)

-Ninjala (free, but very popular game)

-Xenoblade Chronicles 1 HD (over 1.5 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-Darksiders Genesis (no clue what this sold)

-Pikmin 3 Delux (over 2 million shipped by 3/31/21)

I'm not certian off the top of my head which of these came out when, but these all drove hardware last year for somebody. Age of Calimity was not the only game that came out in 2020 that drove people to buy a Switch come holiday. There were plenty of games that came out that year that still seemed new that people bought in to play.

The Pokemon game coming out this year is extremely ridiculoud by the fans. I wouldn't be surprised if it is the worst selling remake to date because of it. I personally like the art style, but I have seen a lot more critisize it than praise it.

The OLED model that many complained about after it was released, and even moreso after Steam Deck was shown, is not something, I think, that will sell well. I think it will historically do worse than LITE, and far worse than the base model. Nintendo gamers that play on the go aren't interested in the best specs possible, and people that want the best visuals will play docked no matter what. The OLED fills a tiny niche in their wider market, it doesn't open up a huge opportunity in my opinion. Could I be wrong? Sure, but it is my opinion that Switch sales will be down Y/Y from fiscal 2020 by at least a few million consoles.



Dulfite said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

No we didn't.  Sales so far this year are about the same as last year.  If you compare only Q2 2020 to Q2 2021, then yeah 2021 is down, because 2020 sales were all about Animal Crossing, and that was the time period when Animal Crossing was really driving sales.  Nintendo's quarterly report said that Animal Crossing was 40% of all of their first party sales during Q2 of 2020!  In 2020 Switch sales really shot up, but the most amazing time of year was during Q2.  So if you only compare Q2 for this year and last year, then you are going to come to some pretty messed up conclusions. 

On the other hand, what games did Nintendo have for holiday 2020?  Nothing really.  They had Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.  This year they are going to have Pokemon and a new Switch model.  Pokemon alone is enough to make sales up YoY.  Throw in a new model, and there should be no question that sales are going to be up this year.  

Aside from HW: AoC and a massive amount of AA and A level games, 2020 had the following popular games:

-Super Mario 3D All Stars (shipped over 9 million by 3/31/21)

-Doom Eternal (not sure how much this one sold)

-Clubhouse 51 (over 3 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-Immortals Fenyx Rising (not sure how much this sold but Ubisoft was pleased publically with Switch sales)

-Paper Mario The Oragami King (over 3 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-MarioKart Live Circuit (over 1 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-Ori and the Will of the Wisps (no clue what this sold)

-Ninjala (free, but very popular game)

-Xenoblade Chronicles 1 HD (over 1.5 million shipped by 3/31/21)

-Darksiders Genesis (no clue what this sold)

-Pikmin 3 Delux (over 2 million shipped by 3/31/21)

I'm not certian off the top of my head which of these came out when, but these all drove hardware last year for somebody. Age of Calimity was not the only game that came out in 2020 that drove people to buy a Switch come holiday. There were plenty of games that came out that year that still seemed new that people bought in to play.

The Pokemon game coming out this year is extremely ridiculoud by the fans. I wouldn't be surprised if it is the worst selling remake to date because of it. I personally like the art style, but I have seen a lot more critisize it than praise it.

The OLED model that many complained about after it was released, and even moreso after Steam Deck was shown, is not something, I think, that will sell well. I think it will historically do worse than LITE, and far worse than the base model. Nintendo gamers that play on the go aren't interested in the best specs possible, and people that want the best visuals will play docked no matter what. The OLED fills a tiny niche in their wider market, it doesn't open up a huge opportunity in my opinion. Could I be wrong? Sure, but it is my opinion that Switch sales will be down Y/Y from fiscal 2020 by at least a few million consoles.

I don't see BD/SP selling below 12M units LT, I think they'll sell that much in their launch quater. On Amazon best sellers in my country they shot up to the top right after the reveal and BD didn't leave the top 100. That's generally not a very good metric for predicting the games sales, but neither is critique on gaming forums.

About the OLED model, it doesn't have better specs.



Just for a short summary about the Switch:

<------Global------><------Americ------><------Europe------><------Japan------><------Others------>
QuartYearTotalQuartYearTotalQuartYearTotalQuartYearTotalQuartYearTotal
31.03.172,742,742,741,201,201,20   0,600,600,60   
30.06.171,964,704,700,751,951,95   0,521,121,12   
30.09.172,937,637,631,163,113,11   0,831,951,95   
31.12.177,2314,8614,862,835,945,94   1,773,723,72   
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
31.03.182,932,9317,791,201,207,14  4,540,660,664,38  1,73
30.06.181,884,8119,670,671,877,810,310,314,850,511,174,890,391,462,12
30.09.183,198,0022,861,323,199,130,881,195,730,631,805,520,361,822,48
31.12.189,4117,4132,273,817,0012,942,773,968,502,224,027,740,612,433,09
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
31.03.192,472,4734,741,071,0714,010,590,599,090,490,498,230,320,323,41
30.06.192,134,6036,870,821,8914,830,511,109,600,531,028,760,270,593,68
30.09.194,809,4041,671,813,7016,641,262,3610,861,242,2610,000,491,084,17
31.12.1910,8120,2152,484,237,9320,873,025,3813,882,424,6812,421,142,225,31
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
31.03.203,293,2955,771,251,2522,120,550,5514,431,021,0213,440,470,475,78
30.06.205,678,9661,441,993,2424,111,612,1616,041,152,1714,590,921,396,70
30.09.206,8615,8268,302,475,7126,581,693,8517,731,583,7516,171,122,517,82
31.12.2011,5727,3979,874,5910,3031,172,976,8220,702,716,4618,881,303,819,12
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
31.03.214,724,7284,592,102,1033,270,880,8821,581,161,1620,040,580,589,70
30.06.214,459,1789,041,593,6934,861,081,9622,661,162,3221,200,621,2010,32

Europe and Others had been combined for some time - thus there are no split sales early in switch lifetime.

Of course all are official Nintendo numbers.

Q2 2021 indeed was slower than Q2 2020, but Q1+Q2 2021 was better than Q1+Q2 2020. So everyone can be right - just use the numbers as you need them. ;)

btw. I have voted for 135-150 million. That should be pretty doable unless Switch 2 will be a surprise release much earlier than we expect right now.