PSP lost to DS, but sold 20 million units, it was a pretty big system in Japan and secured Sony two generations of third party support. 

25-35 million units would be WORLDWIDE sales, if I did not made myself clear. It's pretty doable number for Sony, there is an audience for handhelds abroad, granted not as big as in Japan. I can see it selling at least better than PS5 in Japan though, maybe in the range of 10-12 million units

N64, GC, Wii and Wii U are all perfect illustrations of the sales cap of home consoles. The absolute dumpster fire that was Vita moved twice Wii U numbers in Japan. Wii sold close to 13 million, PS3 a bit over 10 million, PS4 failed to reach 10 million. The cap for a home console as it goes seems to be close to 15 million range in Japan, given or taken. While portables have a bigger audience. I think japanese people gaming habits make the need of a portable console mandatory, as most of people don't have time nor interest to play game at home

Sony never lost 3rd party support either. All the best selling games from PS1 and PS2 are third party that are still on Playstation. Those games simply lost popularity over time, this happens sometimes as market taste changes. I don't think it has anything to do with Sony, see a company like Capcom is releasing great game that are faithful like Resident Evil 2 is on track to move 15 million units worldwide, but did absolutely nothing to Japan. It's clear Japan doesn't like Resident Evil anymore. There is nothing Sony can do to change that

My guess is only the Lite will be cheap enough to potentially stay relevant after it launches though you are right that bundles could also help since it seems to have made a notable difference the past couple months. It's actually a lot less than half, the Lite sold only about a third of what the OLED sold last year in Japan and the regular model understandably doesn't sell that much any more so the OLED was about 70% of switch's sold in Japan last year.

Very true. I didn’t go far enough back and just looked at the weeks of December regarding Lite vs OLED sales. So yes Lite sold a lot less than 1/2 of OLED sales in 2024.

If Switch is at 35.0m sold right now, as according to vgchartz, and with successor likely coming out in 4-5 months, it might hit 36m by the mid-year point (shortly after Switch 2 has launched) by averaging 40k/week as sales drop in anticipation of next gen starting. But then because of price similarities between Switch and Switch 2, the only model of Switch that should be selling at all after that will be the Lite, and it likely won't sell much. So let's say 36.5m by end of year. And then falling off from there over the next couple of years. I'd say it could get up to 37.5-38.0m.

40m is way beyond what's possible.

Sony's issue in Japan is that the time when games like Final Fantasy were the biggest type of games in the Japanese market is long gone, now the more popular console games in Japan are stuff like Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Mario Kart, Smash etc. Cinematic Sony games are not exactly a huge draw for Japanese who usually prefer more cartoony games. So Sony can only rival Nintendo in Japan if they start making Nintendo type games, which they won't. Their priority is the western market which means AAA western focused games.

I just posted this in Tbone's prediction thread: 

Tbone's prediction is aging like fine wine. We're only -0.75mil behind his timeline and it's looking like Switch will blow past 1.2mil for 2025. We may approach 40mil TRACKED by Famitsu!

forgot to tag this thread

 Not necessarily true. Final Fantasy went downhill when they tried to go western, not realizing that people loved it where it was, Persona has matured and has been very successful, and even offsprung new franchises like Metaphor, which has also been successful. Dragon Quest, again, has done really well sticking to its core. JRPG's are still on the move, and Switch 2 is in a great position to boost that. Too many dumb decisions made by Square with Final Fantasy, AND Sony (not pushing Legend Of Dragon and expanding to make it better) That caused people to turn away. Sony can release a handheeld all they want- it will not do well because now developers have to cater to another system which will be proprietary. If Microsoft releases that Microsoft Surface team devloped handheld that combines Xbox and Steam, there will be no need for a Sony handheld. 

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that Playstation as a brand is still in a strong position as a whole, but I do believe that their insistence to investors that they can continue to grow the business in the same way that it has over the last decade is misguided. What you are describing appears to be their strategy going forward, but it will only lead to the current trend continuing, wherein Playstation continues to increase per-user monetization and position itself as an ever more upscale brand at the cost of slowly bleeding users and game sales.

A cutting-edge portable on par with the PS5 graphically would almost certainly be positioned as an upscale product (think the same price point as the PS5 Pro), which would place a clear cap on its sales potential. I don't think it would be the worst position for PlayStation to be in, even with the increasing prevalence of PC gaming at the high end, but ultimately the long-term trends for the PlayStation brand appear to be moving towards a similarly platform-agnostic ecosystem as Steam and now Xbox.

This pretty much; with rare exceptions, Sony has gone all in with cinematic realistic blockbusters which just aren't that popular in Japan, they simply don't provide the kind of software that Japan likes.

Your average Japanese gamer just isn't that interested in The Last of Us or God of War or Horizon.