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Forums - Sales Discussion - The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Another thing I wonder is how the upcoming EU regulations about repairability will affect the Switch, which the Switch in it's current doesn't comply to. Will there be a redesign to comply with those rules or will Nintendo simply stop selling Switches in Europe?

This is a great point I didn't even consider, I mean would the extra sales be worth it to mandate a hardware revision? I honestly doubt it.

With Switch Succesor being released in late 2024, Nintendo would still have to see significant sales for the switch in Europe continued into 2025 to start investing in it and release by mid 2026 to be in compliance.

In the past 12 months the ship has shipped 4.83 million Switches to Europe, which includes the UK which is no longer an EU country. By 2027, I don't see the Switch still selling enough consoles for it to be worth Nintendo having a hardware revision. So I see the Switch as continuing being sent to the UK and all other regions but the EU

Last edited by badskywalker - on 20 August 2023

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Renamed said:

Switch might do more in its 7th year than some people predicted for its whole lifetime.

But I promise you Cliff™ will come any day now!

EDIT:// To new users I feel I have to explain that this is a joke from back around launch of the switch with certain users (who have left the forum since long) claimed that the sales would fall off a cliff and leave switch at 15-20 mil sold. 



PAOerfulone said:

I've noticed that nobody has brought this up (from what I've seen anyway)
But imagine if at the end of this, as the Switch is winding down and it is actually getting close to that 159-160 million mark, Sony decides to pull the ultimate dick move and says final PS2 shipments are over 160 million. The last official number we have on PS2 sales (not shipped) from Sony is "More than 155.0 million as of March 31, 2012."

And worldwide production had officially ceased by January 4th, 2013.

The fact that 155 million number is sales and not shipped means it was closer to 160 million by March 2012 before it ended production. Somewhere within the 157-158 million range if I had to guess. That means it had another 8-9 months of shipments before Sony finally ceased production. It's not too farfetched to believe it could have tacted on another 1-2, maybe 3 million within that period. And assuming it's true, I could certainly see Sony being petty enough to do something like that. Especially after that "brand strength" shot they took at Nintendo a few months ago from out of nowhere.

That would be a lie on Sony's part, so they won't do it.

The page you linked to lists the PS2 figure under "sell-in" a.k.a. shipped, so your whole math is way off to begin with. The decimal 0 in 155.0m provides us with additional clarity, because the same list names other consoles with decimal figures too. This means that "more than 155.0m" also means "less than 155.1m."

Final PS2 shipments might actually be a bit lower than previously assumed by putting various pieces of information together. 158m is pretty much the best case scenario.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

RolStoppable said:
PAOerfulone said:

I've noticed that nobody has brought this up (from what I've seen anyway)
But imagine if at the end of this, as the Switch is winding down and it is actually getting close to that 159-160 million mark, Sony decides to pull the ultimate dick move and says final PS2 shipments are over 160 million. The last official number we have on PS2 sales (not shipped) from Sony is "More than 155.0 million as of March 31, 2012."

And worldwide production had officially ceased by January 4th, 2013.

The fact that 155 million number is sales and not shipped means it was closer to 160 million by March 2012 before it ended production. Somewhere within the 157-158 million range if I had to guess. That means it had another 8-9 months of shipments before Sony finally ceased production. It's not too farfetched to believe it could have tacted on another 1-2, maybe 3 million within that period. And assuming it's true, I could certainly see Sony being petty enough to do something like that. Especially after that "brand strength" shot they took at Nintendo a few months ago from out of nowhere.

That would be a lie on Sony's part, so they won't do it.

The page you linked to lists the PS2 figure under "sell-in" a.k.a. shipped, so your whole math is way off to begin with. The decimal 0 in 155.0m provides us with additional clarity, because the same list names other consoles with decimal figures too. This means that "more than 155.0m" also means "less than 155.1m."

Final PS2 shipments might actually be a bit lower than previously assumed by putting various pieces of information together. 158m is pretty much the best case scenario.

It has pretty much been mathematically proven that 158m is actually the worst case scenario for PS2. You even participated in a thread that discussed these shipments.



Farsala said:

It has pretty much been mathematically proven that 158m is actually the worst case scenario for PS2. You even participated in a thread that discussed these shipments.

Did that thread have the same starting point of 155.0m? I guess I'll go look it up.

EDIT: Indeed, there's no new information. We are still at the same point we've been before with 158m being the floor and 159m being the higher end, realistically speaking.

Last edited by RolStoppable - on 21 August 2023

Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

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RolStoppable said:
Farsala said:

It has pretty much been mathematically proven that 158m is actually the worst case scenario for PS2. You even participated in a thread that discussed these shipments.

Did that thread have the same starting point of 155.0m? I guess I'll go look it up.

EDIT: Indeed, there's no new information. We are still at the same point we've been before with 158m being the floor and 159m being the higher end, realistically speaking.

Yeah I have always believed it to be just below 160m, otherwise sony would have said something.



Spindel said:
Renamed said:

Switch might do more in its 7th year than some people predicted for its whole lifetime.

But I promise you Cliff™ will come any day now!

EDIT:// To new users I feel I have to explain that this is a joke from back around launch of the switch with certain users (who have left the forum since long) claimed that the sales would fall off a cliff and leave switch at 15-20 mil sold. 

Breaking news: Cliff Blezinski stumbled and dropped his Switch as a result. Switch dropping off a Cliff confirmed!



Farsala said:

This is my type of topic.

Should I take the OP as an official prediction then?

Japan: ~10m more, so ~35m LTD
Americas: ~20m more, so ~60m LTD
Europe: ~20m more, so ~47m LTD
Other: ~10m more, so ~22m LTD

Quoting this post as a reference point because my original post was terminated. Also got around to updating my spreadsheet with all the latest numbers, including the CESA White Paper.

When I created this thread, global Switch shipments had reached 103.54m units, so a little less than 60m to go to exceed the 160m mark and become the best-selling console of all time. IIRC, in a response to the above post I said that this isn't a regional prediction, but merely a rough guideline for what needs to be accomplished (the numbers tally up to ~164m to begin with). Already back then it was clear that Japan's goal would be much easier to reach than Other's, so it's no surprise that the most recent shipment numbers confirm this original assumption.

So right now, six fiscal quarters later, we have 129.53m globally. Breaking down the regions:

Japan: 30.79m, so ~5m more.
Americas: 50.18m, so ~10m more.
Europe: 33.53m, so ~11m more.
Other: 15.02m, so ~5m more.

The above guidelines add up to ~160.50m lifetime, with Europe and Other receiving more breathing room due to the good pace of Japan and the Americas. Even so, the goals for Europe and Other will be tougher to reach than the others in the above example. On the other hand, Japan is currently overperforming on a level that picks up the slack for Other; admittedly, Japan's overperformance is probably directly caused by sales of consoles that end up in Other eventually. But this thread has always been about global sales, so such odd regional discrepancies do not matter as it's just shifting sales from one place to another and we would count them all the same anyway. Europe is the big question mark: Still the most to go, but at the same time also the region with the most remaining growth potential.

In year over year calendar shipments for the first half of the year, 2023 is only ~0.5m behind 2022, resulting in a soft decline of under 10%. This happened under the condition of the average selling price going up with Switch OLED shipments increasing by a full million; the standard Switch decreased by ~1.5m units, Switch Lite remained flat, hence ~0.5m less in total shipments. What I find interesting about this is that it suggests that demand for Switch remains high, provided Nintendo actually makes use of SKU options.

Going forward, the year over year comparison is rather gentle with 3.25m in calendar Q3 2022. While I don't think that 2023 will beat that, it's not going to lose much ground. The holiday quarter will be the real deal with 8.23m in 2022, but Nintendo has lined up a little game called Super Mario Bros. Wonder that screams for its own special edition hardware just like Tears of the Kingdom got one. I don't consider it unrealistic to finish 2023 with quarterly shipments of ~3m and ~7m, if Nintendo doesn't mess up SMB Wonder. This would result in calendar year shipments of 17m units and an LTD figure between 139-140m. A more conservative estimate puts 2023 at 16m, the worst case would be 15m if we remain realistic.

Software-wise, the first half of 2022 was at ~97m, 2023 is at ~94m. All in all, 2023 looks to set things back on track after 2022 underperformed a little. We can look forward with confidence, because 2022's overshipments have already been normalized in 2023, so now 2023 can ship as much as it sells, rather than shipping below sell-through.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

Spindel said:
Renamed said:

Switch might do more in its 7th year than some people predicted for its whole lifetime.

But I promise you Cliff™ will come any day now!

EDIT:// To new users I feel I have to explain that this is a joke from back around launch of the switch with certain users (who have left the forum since long) claimed that the sales would fall off a cliff and leave switch at 15-20 mil sold. 

Cliff never expected the Switch to pull out a paraglider.



To the privileged, equality feels like oppression. 

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Another thing I wonder is how the upcoming EU regulations about repairability will affect the Switch, which the Switch in it's current doesn't comply to. Will there be a redesign to comply with those rules or will Nintendo simply stop selling Switches in Europe?

That's for newly released products in and after 2027. Neither the Switch nor the Switch 2 will be affected. And that's without mentioning that this does not include high end batteries that degrade slower.