Allow me to simplify the VGC community's hardware popularity predictions:

Playstation: Constantly underestimated.

Xbox: Constantly overestimated.

Nintendo: Majorly underestimated OR overestimated depending on how the previous generation went.

Xbox numbers are always the least accurate as Microsoft does not reveal official data. But we managed to get a good estimate. In Europe and the United States it is behind the Xbox One, in Japan it is ahead. In the rest of the world it is very difficult to obtain data. Recently the Xbox had an increase of 7 million on this site thanks to an official reveal at a Microsoft event in Brazil

Xbox numbers are always the least accurate as Microsoft does not reveal official data. But we managed to get a good estimate. In Europe and the United States it is behind the Xbox One, in Japan it is ahead. In the rest of the world it is very difficult to obtain data. Recently the Xbox had an increase of 7 million on this site thanks to an official reveal at a Microsoft event in Brazil

Dring’s wording is tricky but at least we get the data. 

Naturally you will have trouble to figure something out when you start with a completely wrong premise. Here's the poll from October 2020, asking for the lifetime sales of the PlayStation 5:

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=243547

The three most popular options were 100-110m, followed by 120-130m, followed by 110-120m. Together they account for roughly 50% of all votes, so the consensus on this site in 2020 was that Microsoft's increased efforts and Nintendo's success would have at best (or at worst, depending on how you look at it) only a small negative impact on PS.

Here's the same kind of poll for the Xbox Series from October 2020:

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=243506

The three most popular options were 60-70m, followed by 50-60m, followed by 70-80m. Together they account for roughly 55% of all votes, so the consensus was that Xbox will do just a bit better than in the generation before.

And for Switch I'll take the November 2021 edition, because the poll from mid-2020 still had the consensus underestimating Nintendo despite three years of sales data already.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=245431

The four most popular poll options cover the range of 120-160m, all with rather similar distribution. Together they account for roughly 70% of all votes. The Switch poll's accuracy after 4.5 years of sales data relative to actual final lifetime sales figures is roughly equal to the PS5 poll's accuracy with no sales data whatsoever.

The bottom line is that PS fans lack the grounds to say that the PS5 was greatly underestimated. It wasn't, and most of the final margin of error will come down to the widespread assumption of a 7-year-lifecycle instead of a possible 8-year-lifecycle, because the impact of Microsoft's moves was perceived as small to negligible three years ago.

...

On topic, or rather a more general observation for the year 2023: Microsoft has scaled back a lot on Xbox deals compared to a generation ago, hence why Xbox hardware sales are in a dire state. What's amplifying this lately is that Sony is doing a lot of temporary PS5 deals since July, so if Microsoft does little to nothing this holiday season, Xbox Series will have had a really poor 2023.

1. These polls were made before any knowledge about MS acquiring ABK, before knowing COVID would be limiting PS5 sales for over 2 years, and inflation keeping productions costs too high. PS5 would have crushed Xbox were it not for developments that no one in this poll took into account. Microsoft lucked out, and yet it turns out Xbox got overestimated again.

2. The poll results still show a clear underestimation of PS5's performance (you will concede when the generation ends), and an even clearer overestimation of Xbox performance. Not many people took the PC day and date damage seriously, but soon enough everyone will.

3. The more "pessimistic" Xbox predictions came more often from Playstation players (including some multiplatform users who don't play on Xbox). And the more "optimistic" PS5 predictions also came more often from Playstation fans. In other words, Playstation fans skewed the data closer to the correct prediction ranges for both systems. This generation's hardware sales are looking notably more one sided than the previous one despite Microsoft's lucky start and major acquisitions. The consensus was that it would be much closer, the consensus was wrong again.

4. PS5's temporary deals are cancelled out by unpredictable price hikes (people expected permanent pridedrops by now). Xbox Series XS's crazy deals didn't move many systems in late 2022 when PS5 finally became available in decent quantities. Series XS is simply riddled with issues and inherent flaws that a lot of people chose to ignore.

5. Switch was massively underestimated due to a poor prior generation and doubts as to whether or not Nintendo was going combine their library into one platform. And contrary to Playstation and to a smaller extent Xbox, the pandemic significantly boosted its hardware sales. But I don't think anyone argues that it wasn't underestimated. No console in the internet age was more underestimated.

1. The polls are from 2020 because that is the year that Train wreck chose.

2. This generation's oddities of limited PS5 supply followed by fulfilling pentup demand are making people go crazy in both directions. In early 2022 we had Xbox fans go bonkers and predict the bestselling Xbox ever when it should have been clear that Xbox greatly benefited from the limited PS5 supply. Now in 2023 we have PS fans think that things will continue to be as lopsided as they are in 2023, but from next year onwards the PS5 isn't going to have the benefit of the pentup demand and sales will normalize.

3. Different fanbases having a different consensus is normal, so it's not worth pointing out unless one fanbase greatly outnumbers all others. The overall consensus (and that's what Train wreck was refering to) was nowhere near as off as Train wreck suggested in his post. Said actual consensus was roughly minus 10m for PS and plus 10m for Xbox which is not a big change for a total volume of approximately 175m combined.

4. It looks like Sony adopted the morally questionable strategy of using an inflated MSRP to make their deals look a lot better than they really are, a practice that is particularly widespread among Black Friday across all kinds of products. They'll have to keep doing this at least once per quarter to keep sales high enough for additional years of 20m+ sales.

5. I added the Switch poll to provide a broader perspective. The PS5 before launch wasn't any more underestimated than Switch was after we already had 4.5 years of sales data for it.

I highly recommend that you read Train wreck's post again. It's such a rubbish post and once you acknowledge how wrongly it portrayed the year 2020, then there's really not much to argue about here.

If the consensus for sales predictions for Switch 2 ends up being 135m even if we assume that Nintendo is doing mostly everything right again, then I wouldn't complain and call that "people do expect trouble for Switch 2." But I do remember that Train wreck isn't the only guy who throws/threw a fit over the PS5 being predicted to sell "only" 105-110m units in its lifetime. I do understand people getting upset by bullshit predictions such as quickrick's for Switch or The_Liquid_Laser's for the PS5, but surely everyone realizes what world of difference there is between them and a consensus that had the PS5 sell 10m less than the PS4 and the Xbox Series X|S sell 10m more than the Xbox One.

Spider-Man 2 is the first big PS5 only exclusive released 3 years after console’s life. Before that there were only cross-gen games and mid exclusives released. The system is still the same $499 from launch and more expensive at the rest of the world.

GTAVI alongside many more current games being developed and we STILL have people saying the PS5 won’t keep up in sales in the upcoming years.

They are horrible indeed, but I will reserve my judgment until next month. I suspect that Microsoft reduced their production on purpose to appear a lot weaker to regulators. I think by around this time next month we will know for sure if I'm wrong on my theory.

October in Spain PS5 was 16:1 versus Series and even PS Portal was 3:1