I agree with your prognosis. I expect around a 33% decline YoY for the Switch in Japan for 2025 even with the successor on the field.

Which would put it at ~37 million units sold to consumers and probably 38-39 million shipped.

I'm telling you guys, 40 million is not out of the question!

Why do you expect only a decline of around 33%? The DS completely fell of a cliff in 2011 so the only scenario I can see the decline having any chance of being that modest is if it's a late 2025 release for the Switch 2 which seems unlikely.

Even with a late 2025 release I don't see how 40m is even a remote possibility cause in that scenario it should sell at most 1m in 2026 and it definitely isn't selling another 2m after that year.

Why do you expect only a decline of around 33%? The DS completely fell of a cliff in 2011 so the only scenario I can see the decline having any chance of being that modest is if it's a late 2025 release for the Switch 2 which seems unlikely.

It's already shipped 35.62 million units as of Sept 30 according to Nintendo themselves

Since then, it has sold around another 1 million in Q4 2024, which would put it right under or exactly 37 million units shipped as of Dec 31. From there it'd only need to ship another 3 million from 2025 onwards to reach 40 million.

Even if it were to decline 50% this year, that's still another 1.5-1.6 million units sold to consumers. Add that to what could very well be the latest shipment figure depending on Nintendo's next Investor's Meeting in early February - That would put it around 38.5 million units (~37 million shipped at the end of December + the 1.5-1.6 million in projected sales in 2025) and that doesn't include how much it ships in 2025, which could very well bring the number closer to 39 million.

From there, it would just need another ~1 million from 2026 onwards to reach the goal.

It's already shipped 35.62 million units as of Sept 30 according to Nintendo themselves

Since then, it has sold around another 1 million in Q4 2024, which would put it right under or exactly 37 million units shipped as of Dec 31. From there it'd only need to ship another 3 million from 2025 onwards to reach 40 million.

Even if it were to decline 50% this year, that's still another 1.5-1.6 million units sold to consumers. Add that to what could very well be the latest shipment figure depending on Nintendo's next Investor's Meeting in early February - That would put it around 38.5 million units (~37 million shipped at the end of December + the 1.5-1.6 million in projected sales in 2025) and that doesn't include how much it ships in 2025, which could very well bring the number closer to 39 million.

From there, it would just need another ~1 million from 2026 onwards to reach the goal.

I expect 33% because the Switch will be the “cheap” console when the successor releases. I also expect a later release in the year (anytime from mid-Summer to November). Considering that it sold around 3.1M this year selling around 2M will be simple as the franchises that release solely on Switch will help boost sales (even if it’s just for a week or two). And Switch skin releases will boost sales as well.

And yes as of January 5 Switch has shipped a minimum of 36.62M consoles in Japan. So with the “goal” of 2M will bring us to ~38.62M and in 2026 it should sell near 1M.

I personally set a goal of the Switch selling 39.11M units in Japan. And it seems I need to increase that goal once more. So if 2025 sells 2M and 2026 sells 1M the Switch should be near 39.62M units. And since Nintendo said they will continue to support the Switch into 2027, we can make an assumption that it’ll sell an additional 0.5M reaching 40.12M units shipped. After 2027 I expect Nintendo to stop manufacturing Switch units and reaching the new goal of ~40.12M units shipped.

My hope is that with this Thursday's numbers for week 2, it will show "last week" numbers which will let us calculate the splits.

I just remembered that Famitsu doesn't track all of the sold Switch's so the actual number currently sold is probably closer to 36m than 35m. That does make it less unreasonable though I'd still consider it really unrealistic since the Switch should basically collapse soon after the Switch 2 launches like the DS did after the 3DS. Factors like the Lite could help it avoid falling off quite as fast as that but even about 38m sold by the end of this year would put 40m firmly of the table I'd say and I'd consider that an optimistic outlook since a late 2025 launch would be required for it.

This ignores that the most expensive model the OLED is the vast majority of Switch's sold in Japan now and people aren't gonna continue spending that much for one of those if they can spend not that much more and get a vastly better piece of hardware that'll have a much, much longer life ahead of it. The Switch Lite will help but that can only do so much since it's not that popular.

The only thing Sony can do is come back releasing portable consoles. Currently there are many games that can be scaled back, with help of modern engines, which could make porting games easier. The problem however is those games are clearly made with TV in mind and the audience is limitado to people who really wants to play those games portable no matter what 

I think a new Sony handheld could sell between 25-35 million units, granted it received the majority of PS5 library and included free versions of the library you already own. The question is, is Sony willing to make hardware to sell that little and get barely any revenue from hardware and software only to sell more units in Japan? I don't think so 

I made a post about this in another forum a few days ago, but I'll reiterate what I said here b/c I think it's pretty relevant:

Honestly, I feel like the PS5 is in an interesting situation right now. It's arguably Sony's most successful console to date, at least in terms of raw revenue and profits, but I feel similarly to it as I do the Wii, in that it has clearly exposed a lot of vulnerabilities in Sony's business model that could very much come back to bite then in the next generation, as Nintendo learned with the Wii.

Firstly, one very clear issue with the PS5 that has been somewhat masked by the high per-unit sales and consistent sales pace is that sales in Europe and Japan are very noticeably beginning to lag behind the PS4, likely due to growing competition from the PC space and economic woes. This has been compensated for by increased sales in NA, almost certainly due to Playstation continuing to steal console players from Xbox. If not for that, its sales trajectory would not look nearly as rosy.

Another issue is that Sony has arguably reached the limit of their current business model. AAA games are harder to produce than ever with diminishing returns. Hardware has also gotten way more pricey lately, with the loss-leader model of console sales collapsing. I wouldn't be surprised if the next-gen PS6 costs $700, and for what? Even cutting-edge PCs nowadays don't offer a significant bump in graphical fidelity over the PS5, unless ur way up the Nvidia pipeline, which given the costs of their GPUs will likely prevent them from making any significant headway into the console market. The final straw has to be if Switch 2 is capable of running current-gen multi-plats, which would render the current status quo of market segmentation between the two companies practically null and void.

What we can say for sure is that Sony's back does seem to be against a wall in a shrinking market sector. With Nintendo utterly dominant in the handheld market and Microsoft and Steam encroaching with PC and PC handhelds, Sony's best bet at this point is hoping that they can consolidate what remains of the home console market by forcing Xbox out of it. Only time will tell if that will work out for them...