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What will happen first?: Switch sales reach 30 million vs. PS5 sales reach 3 million in Japan

Which milestone will be achieved first?

  • Nintendo Switch - 30 million

    Votes: 39 79.6%

  • PlayStation 5 - 3 million

    Votes: 10 20.4%
  • Total voters
    49
  • Poll closed .
MysticGon

MysticGon

Member
Enthusiast
Code: 
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
|System |  This Week |  Last Week |  Last Year |     YTD    |  Last YTD  |     LTD     |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
| NSW # |     54.637 |     43.329 |    108.122 |  3.604.043 |  4.266.031 |  26.523.544 |
| PS5 # |     28.661 |     20.297 |     14.280 |    804.448 |    878.742 |   2.027.783 |
| XBS # |      4.158 |      3.551 |      3.889 |    243.339 |     79.243 |     371.997 |
| 3DS # |         57 |        113 |        449 |      9.736 |     25.016 |  24.597.184 |
| PS4 # |         13 |         11 |        462 |        711 |     99.375 |   9.395.655 |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
|  ALL  |     87.526 |     67.301 |    127.202 |  4.662.277 |  5.348.407 |  64.105.195 |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
|  PS5  |     26.238 |     18.691 |     11.526 |    720.611 |    744.413 |   1.749.737 |
| PS5DE |      2.423 |      1.606 |      2.754 |     83.837 |    134.329 |     278.046 |
| XBS X |        207 |        469 |         74 |     91.512 |     40.116 |     164.803 |
| XBS S |      3.951 |      3.082 |      3.815 |    151.827 |     39.127 |     207.194 |
|NSWOLED|     38.079 |     24.229 |     61.169 |  2.052.641 |    232.072 |   2.824.769 |
| NSW L |      1.186 |      1.490 |      8.295 |    491.576 |  1.034.568 |   4.902.360 |
|  NSW  |     15.372 |     17.610 |     38.658 |  1.059.826 |  2.999.391 |  18.796.415 |
|  PS4  |         13 |         11 |        462 |        711 |     99.151 |   7.819.932 |
|n-2DSLL|         57 |        113 |        449 |      9.736 |     25.016 |   1.202.239 |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+

Chart by @Chris1964

Which milestone will be achieved first?
 
PlayStation has a pretty big 2023 planned and even though big games are still planned for next year it's clear Switch's best years are behind it. If each console's sales move 20% in either direction to this year's current YTD it could lead to a tight contest.
 
By the end of 2022 Switch will be nearly 28 million units sold, PS5 over 2.4 million.

<600k VS >2 million huuuuuuuuuuuuuum Switch must sell over 3:1 (maybe closer to 4:1) PS5 for at leats H1 next year, this will be a close call.
 
Ryng™ said:
By the end of 2022 Switch will be nearly 28 million units sold, PS5 over 2.4 million.

<600k VS >2 million huuuuuuuuuuuuuum Switch must sell over 3:1 (maybe closer to 4:1) PS5 for at leats H1 next year, this will be a close call.
Click to expand...

You think ps5 will sell over 41k weekly avg for the next 9 weeks? (2027k currently so 373k left to sell)
 
The question is more of a trivia and irrelevant to the market as a whole (it won't matter in the gran scheme of things) but it could indeed be tight between these two.

For NSW
we can make some basic assumptions
- It should be around 28M by the end of CY
- The questions then becomes "how long will it take for NSW to reach 2M YTD in 2023"

We have Luminoth 4545 graph to look at to get an idea
  • In 2018 45 weeks (total YTD 3.5m)
  • In 2019 36 weeks (total YTD 4.5m)
  • In 2020 17 weeks (total YTD 6m)
  • In 2021 16 weeks (total YTD 5.5m)
  • In 2022 23 weeks (total YTD ~5m)

The overall yearly trend is rather clear for Switch, it should go down in 2023 the question is how much, 4.5m, 4m, 3.5m, lower than that ?
Going with a 4M YTD assumption and a standard supply allocation by Nintendo (eg. not massively supply constrained like in early years but might still be occasionnaly) it would be fair to say it should take a bit more than H1 to clear 2M in 2023 and that the milestone should be reach between July-September, or between week 27-39

Now for PS5
Comes the hardest part, it's more about supply than anything else really and 2022 just showed us that improving with time is certainly not a guarantee
It's at 2.027M right now, hopefully it should be able to reach 2.2M by year's end.
So the question is : How long will it take to reach 800k YTD next year
It litterally took 42 weeks this year
It took 38 weeks in 2021.

Assuming some kind of improvement on the shipment front I would expect it to be a bit earlier in the year for 2023, but as PS5 potential is limited to begin with in Japan it's not like it should reach that milestone half year or before either.
So a wide range would be between week 30-38


Things might change though, my main scenario is computed with these assumptions
- Normal supply and 4M YTD for NSW in 2023 with 5M YTD for 2022
- Improved supply for PS5 in 2023 with 1M YTD in 2022

A variance in either criteria could change things notably, but as is it's really a coin flip considering how tight it could end up being and the lack of information to have a more accurate idea of when each should reach their respective milestone
 
Giving this a bump because both consoles have crossed a milestone last week.

Switch - 28 million
PlayStation 5 - 2.5 million.
 
i wonder how many switch units would get moved due to a new FE game in Japan. But seems pretty clear Switch will take this.
 
MysticGon said:
Giving this a bump because both consoles have crossed a milestone last week.

Switch - 28 million
PlayStation 5 - 2.5 million.
Click to expand...
If the switch sells at least 4x whatever PS5 sells on average each week the switch will cross that milestone first. If the switch keeps falling and the PS5 market keeps pumping consistent numbers I think PS5 will cross that milestone first.
 
At current sales, Playstation only needs 12 weeks while the Switch needs 27 for those markers. It seems likely that they'll both decrease and thus need more weeks than that but, Playstation 5 probably has a baseline of 20k which would only double the number of weeks. The Switch would need a higher baseline than current sales to reach 30 million before the PS5 hits 3
 
Zelda coming out in May and Final Fantasy in June it could give Nintendo a slight edge. A Nintendo Direct could also have a similar impact.
 
Astrogamer said:
At current sales, Playstation only needs 12 weeks while the Switch needs 27 for those markers. It seems likely that they'll both decrease and thus need more weeks than that but, Playstation 5 probably has a baseline of 20k which would only double the number of weeks. The Switch would need a higher baseline than current sales to reach 30 million before the PS5 hits 3
Click to expand...

Looks like PS5 will win this bet. I expect a baseline of 40K units.
 
10 people should be feeling awfully smug about their votes right about now.

Edit: toned downed the language
 
Baki said:
The fact that your prior post had a spiteful tone even after moderating the tone.
Click to expand...
You came to the wrong conclusion. I edited my language because it was too casual and can be taken in the wrong way like you have done.
 
The real question should be will PS5 reach 5 million or Switch 30 million first?

If the PS5 is able to do that, it'll be an unbelievable accomplishment as it would mean it would have sold around 1/2 of US sales in Japan this year. Personally, I think Switch will win that battle.
 
Last edited:
Kmds said:
The real question should will PS5 will reach 5 million or Switch 30 million first?

If the PS5 is able to do that, it'll be an unbelievable accomplishment as it would mean it would have sold around 1/2 of US sales in Japan this year. Personally, I think Switch will win that battle.
Click to expand...

Since we can see the assumptions I laid out in my post above ended up lacking accuracy for
- NSW LTD by the end of the 2022 (27.9M expected vs 27.7M real)
- PS5 LTD by the end of 2022 (2.2M expected vs 2.35M real)

Which by ripple effect changes
- NSW YTD for 2023 is expected to hit a lower range (~3.5M vs ~4M)

And the elephant in the room of the combination of unexpected massive supply and, more importantly, massive unfulfilled demand for PS5.

NSW
We can still guesstimate sort of for NSW
- It's at 28.45M right now (W10 2023)
- It's tracking between 2018 and 2019 but closer to the latter than the former

So how long would it take to sell additionnal 1.55M NSW is the question
From W10 it took 29 extra weeks in 2019
From W10 it took 36 weeks in 2018 to do that

Looking at the YTD sales curves it shouldn't be that different for 2023, the main changes year to year are that christmas period tends to be flatter and flatter year after year, and that big releases cause less of a bump, otherwise the sales trend accross the whole year remains regular

2018 especially had dire spring weekly sales due to shortages (a fair amount of ~30k week), even 2019 had to deal with a few of them late spring.
Shortages shouldn't be a problem anymore for NSW by now and the floor for NSW weekly seems to hover around 40-50k, so if anything I would expect 2023 to be much closer or even faster than 2019 pace than 2018 from now on.

Basically an upper range around W40-42 for NSW to reach 30M (<50k/week average, slightly worse sales than 2019 for that period)
And a lower range around W36-38 for NSW to reach 30M (~55-60k/week average,slightly better sales than 2019 for that period)

Both being with weeks hitting as low at 40k and some bumps depending on new releases (Zelda, Momotaro, Pikmin... I don't expect 150k weeks anymore but getting close to 100k could be possible)

Which would mean overall somewhere around W36-42
Coming from an initial W27-39 that's in the upper range and revised upwards a bit due to aforementionned factors.

PS5
I don't know, that's a fool's errand to try to be too accurate until the dust settles down on what its baseline is supposed to be now that shipments are normalized.

Still, if we work with the assumptions above for NSW we can calculate what PS5 needs to sell on average to reach any particular milestone before NSW reach 30M

For PS5 to reach 4M before NSW reaches 30M
- PS5 needs to sell between 29k and 36k / week on average

For PS5 to reach 5M before NSW reach 30M
- PS5 needs to sell between 61k and 74k / week on average

I just can't bet on PS5 reaching 5M before NSW reaches 30M, it defies too many historical trends and sales of PS hardwares for nearly two decades. But at the same time the current sales doesn't make sense either so...
 
Fisico said:
Since we can see the assumptions I laid out in my post above ended up lacking accuracy for
- NSW LTD by the end of the 2022 (27.9M expected vs 27.7M real)
- PS5 LTD by the end of 2022 (2.2M expected vs 2.35M real)

Which by ripple effect changes
- NSW YTD for 2023 is expected to hit a lower range (~3.5M vs ~4M)

And the elephant in the room of the combination of unexpected massive supply and, more importantly, massive unfulfilled demand for PS5.

NSW
We can still guesstimate sort of for NSW
- It's at 28.45M right now (W10 2023)
- It's tracking between 2018 and 2019 but closer to the latter than the former

So how long would it take to sell additionnal 1.55M NSW is the question
From W10 it took 29 extra weeks in 2019
From W10 it took 36 weeks in 2018 to do that

Looking at the YTD sales curves it shouldn't be that different for 2023, the main changes year to year are that christmas period tends to be flatter and flatter year after year, and that big releases cause less of a bump, otherwise the sales trend accross the whole year remains regular

2018 especially had dire spring weekly sales due to shortages (a fair amount of ~30k week), even 2019 had to deal with a few of them late spring.
Shortages shouldn't be a problem anymore for NSW by now and the floor for NSW weekly seems to hover around 40-50k, so if anything I would expect 2023 to be much closer or even faster than 2019 pace than 2018 from now on.

Basically an upper range around W40-42 for NSW to reach 30M (<50k/week average, slightly worse sales than 2019 for that period)
And a lower range around W36-38 for NSW to reach 30M (~55-60k/week average,slightly better sales than 2019 for that period)

Both being with weeks hitting as low at 40k and some bumps depending on new releases (Zelda, Momotaro, Pikmin... I don't expect 150k weeks anymore but getting close to 100k could be possible)

Which would mean overall somewhere around W36-42
Coming from an initial W27-39 that's in the upper range and revised upwards a bit due to aforementionned factors.

PS5
I don't know, that's a fool's errand to try to be too accurate until the dust settles down on what its baseline is supposed to be now that shipments are normalized.

Still, if we work with the assumptions above for NSW we can calculate what PS5 needs to sell on average to reach any particular milestone before NSW reach 30M

For PS5 to reach 4M before NSW reaches 30M
- PS5 needs to sell between 29k and 36k / week on average

For PS5 to reach 5M before NSW reach 30M
- PS5 needs to sell between 61k and 74k / week on average

I just can't bet on PS5 reaching 5M before NSW reaches 30M, it defies too many historical trends and sales of PS hardwares for nearly two decades. But at the same time the current sales doesn't make sense either so...
Click to expand...

I completely agree. It’s way too hard to predict PS5 sales without a couple of months of more data and normalized supply. I think that’s precisely why we should redo the prediction thread with 5M PS5 vs 30M Switch. Prediction threads are best when the outcomes are unpredictable.
 
I was reminded of this thread through another discussion but NSW and PS4 reached 30M and 4M LTD the same week this year, W30 that is according to Famitsu.

You can see two posts above how NSW massively outperformed 2018 and 2019 during that period to sell 1.55M in 20 weeks from W10 to W30, vs 29 weeks in 2019 and 36 weeks in 2018.
 
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