The biggest reason this is very unlikely to happen at this point is the Switch post Switch 2 is selling worse than the DS did post 3DS so far when it needs to be doing better. The DS was at 151.52m shipped by the end of March 2012 and only shipped another 2.5m after that so assuming the Switch is at 156-156.5m by the end of March next year it has to suddenly go from doing worse to doing significantly better than the DS post successor to reach 160m.

March 2012? Didn’t 3DS release March 2011? And 3DS sold well over ten million post-NS1 launch… granted that was a very special scenario.

Pulling the numbers from March 2011: DS was still at 146mil. So… that strengthens NS1’s case for catching up to 160mil, no?

edit: Also, a very important detail pertaining to DS after the launch of 3DS— the 3DS was not selling well from March through September 2011 due to the $250USD price tag. Once the price dropped in Fall 2011, so too would DS sales fall off a cliff. Switch maintaining close pace with DS currently suggests it’ll likely be well ahead of DS pace in the not-too-distant future. And so, if DS could pull 6mil post-3DS, then there’s no reason for Switch to fall short.

You misunderstood what I was saying. 2012 is the year after the 3DS came out like how 2026 will be the after the Switch 2 came out so I was showing that the Switch will need to suddenly start doing significantly better than the DS after this fiscal year to have any chance. It's not a direct comparison since the 3DS released a few months earlier in its year but that doesn't change things much.

The 3DS price cut happened at the end of July which made it sell way better in August and September and the DS did significantly decline those months but it still sold notably better than the Switch did those months this year so the Switch is still performing worse than the DS post 3DS so far even after the big price cut. Cause of that I see no reason for things to change in a big way in the coming months especially with the forecast being adjusted downwards. Unless a surprise final revision does end up happening it's truly over now I'd say.

Not really to be honest, the console industry has mainly maintained the same popularity for the past 25 years. The total consoles sold per gen between PS & Xbox has stayed the same since the PS2 era. Also in all of the primary areas where the Switch & PS2 were sold in, the overall population for each region barely went up and in some cases population dropped since 2000 like in Japan. In Europe or the U.S the population hasn't gone up significantly in since 2000.

Yea you could argue that is you include Nintendo into the consoles sold by gen that the console industry has gone up compared to before with stuff like the Gamecube. But that isnt necessarily due to new gamers going into the gaming industry, but rather many preexisting PS & Xbox gamers choosing to get the Switch as a secondary option or another console in general.

I mean, PS2 being the bestselling console ever and holding that title for 20+ years now should also show at least the console industry hasn't gone up much in popularity past 20 years. Its mainly just other areas like mobile gaming that's accelerating gaming popularity growth, not consoles

Does the 160M number for the PS2 include the consoles solely being bought as a DVD player or not ?

Michael Jordan outscored LeBron James in a per game basis, and Jordan has 10 scoring titles, LeBron has 1 despite LeBron playing like 6 years more than Jordan. People consider Jordan the better scorer because he was the better scorer. 

If there's an artist that comes out and blows out the sales numbers for Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous .... yes, they are bigger than Michael Jackson. 

The Switch kicks the PS2's ass in sales at year 8 and has outsold the PS2 virtually its entire product cycle, which is not a short product cycle either skewed by a small sample size. We're talking 8 freaking years here already. Switch 1 could sell 170-180 million, everyone knows this too, if Nintendo allowed it to stay on store shelves and maybe even gave a price cut it would get there easy. 

The only reason the PS2 is even in this race is because of a technicality ... it needs like 3-4 extra years to be able to match the sales the Switch 1 will end up with, which is laughable if you're the "more popular console". No you're not. The "most popular console" should never be *years* behind the sales pace of another system at year 6/7/8 ... no way. That's a full generation worth of sales, you shouldn't be getting your ass kicked by another system if you're really the "most popular".