Video Game Sales Thread

[Xevross]

It's probably close to if not around 9 Million with the rest of November. Benji said Pokémon week was "fudgy insane" for switch hardware sales. That should be notable.

With the biggest 5 days being up 115% YOY, I'm expecting roughly double YOY overall. First week of Nov will have been around the same, but second week with pokemon launch should have been around double, and cyber monday week will be much bigger than the third week last year.

I'm expecting at least 1.4M Switch

[the-pi-guy]

The only way "8.2m" would make sense is if either:
- Switch sold nearly nothing extra last black Friday
- Switch sold nearly nothing the rest of the month.  

I'm glad people are coming around to this.

[BananaKing]

You guys are basing this on?

To me something doesn't make sense with that logic, you say Nintendo had data for just bf week but don't have the data for the weeks before yet? Why would the latest data be ready before the eirlier weeks?

[Xevross]

You guys are basing this on?

To me something doesn't make sense with that logic, you say Nintendo had data for just bf week but don't have the data for the weeks before yet? Why would the latest data be ready before the eirlier weeks?

Logic and common sense. Switch had a better BF weekend than the Wii ever managed. Looking at Wii historical data, and knowing Switch is up 115% over last year points to Switch being 800-900k.

I don't know what happened with Nintendo's numbers, maybe the person who made the PR only got to see those 5 days and just added it to October NPD numbers. But 8.2M is almost definitely at least a few hundred k short of where Switch is actually at right now.

[Kerotan]

Keep in mind the Wii sold 800k Black Friday week and this was higher(I know different days but a large large majority of those sales were Thursday-Sunday).
It's virtually impossible since that would mean Pokémon sold no hardware which is not true.

What if Nintendo were basing this report on revenue?

[Xevross]

What if Nintendo were basing this report on revenue?

They never do that. They've made PR many, many times in the past and its always been units.

[the-pi-guy]

You guys are basing this on?

Assuming that last year the switch sold x percent of it's sales on black Friday, the increase would put it like this:

25% -> 530k leaving about 90k per week
37.5%-> 645k leaving like 50k per week
50% -> 760k leaving about 15k per week
62.5% ->875k

25% would basically be black Friday week being flat over the previous week.  There's no way that'd happen. 

All the cases are way too low for Switch in a month with Pokemon.

To me something doesn't make sense with that logic, you say Nintendo had data for just bf week but don't have the data for the weeks before yet? Why would the latest data be ready before the eirlier weeks?

Nintendo might have better numbers that they aren't sharing (which they've done before)  or they're still waiting for better numbers but they know it's above X. 

[the-pi-guy]

In the first case, the switch would be around flat week over week last year, but this year would have to be up 600%.
And it only gets worse from there in the other cases.  

I admit, these numbers are very flawed.  CM was in NPD's December last year.  So it's not going to match up well.  

But the crude estimations, are good enough to show how implausible it is, that the Switch is only at 8.2m.  

[Kerotan]

They never do that. They've made PR many, many times in the past and its always been units.

There's a first time for everything.

[BananaKing]

There's a first time for everything.

Agreed, specially when it comes to PR, they will use anything to make a good spin.

As for what's written above, I'm not convinced. And I'll be waiting on NPD data to see what's up.

However there is something a lot seem to be doing, which is thinking that switch will no matter what do 1~ million in sales in both Nov and Dec, and that black Friday, Pokémon and smash will increase sales from that baseline. I've read numerous claims on vgc and other sites that switch will do 2m in December, heck I just read one dude day 2.5 million "easy". Is it just me or am I the only one who doesn't think it's normal for one game to push a console to 2~ 2.5 million units in one month in the USA.

Specially when it comes to November, a month were big sales happen for two main reasons, big releases and promotions. Holiday shopping really kicks in in December, while it does raise sales in November it's no where near the reason as black Friday and big game releases.

In the past PS4 has had call of duty, starwars games, battlefield games, fallout and other big games released this month, along with insane price promotions like last year for example. (Biggest CoD yet, a starwars game and 100$ off) and it reached 1.6 million, and that's considered pretty great.

So why is it a given that switch is going to sell so much easily? From what I'm seeing it's behind the PS4 this year, and the past 2 months the PS4 has considerable leads, mainly due to software releases, those two being Spiderman and RDR, but how much did those two push PS4 sales, and extra 150k~ during each month? Both were bigger releases than Pokémon, but why are we expecting Pokemon to push to much more consoles than that? I'm making a ps4 Vs switch issue here, I'm simply using the PS4's sales curve and momentum as an example

Last year switch didn't have any BF deals to my recollection, but it had continued push from mario odyssey and it was entering its first holiday.  So I'm not sure why it's BF week would have been that good.

So I'm not sure why it seems so unrealistic that Pokémon and a bf deal which was just bundling a game with the console would push to the console to 820k with one week of sales left to go in November. Those 820k sales are not s given, there are reasons behind them and it's the promotion and and Pokémon.

Maybe some of the numbers were given don't add up or make sense at the time being like the 115% up YoY for the same time frame (I'm sure there is a spin somewhere though). But I guess I'm just going to wait till NPD.

Also another point I'd like to say, PS4 has been outselling and outshipping switch all year, PS4 stock is depleted, switch seems to have plentiful, yet we expect the sales to be the same? Are we to believe that stores ordered more switched than PS4's? And that Switch shipped more? Even though all the data we have shows that PS4 has been shipping more? I mean I'm just trying to connect the dots here and make sense of everyone's comments, people keep saying that switch will do 2+ million in December easily, a number that PS4 never managed despite having insane deals in the past.

[Dr. Pezus]

Nintendo always is more focused on holidays than playstation. It's relatively more popular then compared to the rest of the year

[Xevross]

Agreed, specially when it comes to PR, they will use anything to make a good spin.

As for what's written above, I'm not convinced. And I'll be waiting on NPD data to see what's up.

However there is something a lot seem to be doing, which is thinking that switch will no matter what do 1~ million in sales in both Nov and Dec, and that black Friday, Pokémon and smash will increase sales from that baseline. I've read numerous claims on vgc and other sites that switch will do 2m in December, heck I just read one dude day 2.5 million "easy". Is it just me or am I the only one who doesn't think it's normal for one game to push a console to 2~ 2.5 million units in one month in the USA.

Specially when it comes to November, a month were big sales happen for two main reasons, big releases and promotions. Holiday shopping really kicks in in December, while it does raise sales in November it's no where near the reason as black Friday and big game releases.

In the past PS4 has had call of duty, starwars games, battlefield games, fallout and other big games released this month, along with insane price promotions like last year for example. (Biggest CoD yet, a starwars game and 100$ off) and it reached 1.6 million, and that's considered pretty great.

So why is it a given that switch is going to sell so much easily? From what I'm seeing it's behind the PS4 this year, and the past 2 months the PS4 has considerable leads, mainly due to software releases, those two being Spiderman and RDR, but how much did those two push PS4 sales, and extra 150k~ during each month? Both were bigger releases than Pokémon, but why are we expecting Pokemon to push to much more consoles than that? I'm making a ps4 Vs switch issue here, I'm simply using the PS4's sales curve and momentum as an example

Last year switch didn't have any BF deals to my recollection, but it had continued push from mario odyssey and it was entering its first holiday.  So I'm not sure why it's BF week would have been that good.

So I'm not sure why it seems so unrealistic that Pokémon and a bf deal which was just bundling a game with the console would push to the console to 820k with one week of sales left to go in November. Those 820k sales are not s given, there are reasons behind them and it's the promotion and and Pokémon.

Maybe some of the numbers were given don't add up or make sense at the time being like the 115% up YoY for the same time frame (I'm sure there is a spin somewhere though). But I guess I'm just going to wait till NPD.

Also another point I'd like to say, PS4 has been outselling and outshipping switch all year, PS4 stock is depleted, switch seems to have plentiful, yet we expect the sales to be the same? Are we to believe that stores ordered more switched than PS4's? And that Switch shipped more? Even though all the data we have shows that PS4 has been shipping more? I mean I'm just trying to connect the dots here and make sense of everyone's comments, people keep saying that switch will do 2+ million in December easily, a number that PS4 never managed despite having insane deals in the past.

Nintendo consoles have always sold proportionally larger amounts in the holidays compared to the others, especially playstation, which has historically low holiday bumps.

PS4 stock is smaller now because Sony heavily limited supply for black friday. Before then, they had only the basic console which they wanted to phase out, and they shipped nowhere near enough Spidey PS4's to meet demand. This meant that when all the Spidey PS4's had gone, it was pretty much just Pros left, which weren't discounted. Now the COD bundle has arrived, but stock was low. Nintendo need to ship about 3-4M more Switches than Sony do PS4s this quarter if they want to meet their respective targets, so its obvious why Switch stock is higher now.

Last November Switch sold 770k with absolutely 0 games and 0 Black Friday deals. This year it had a pokemon game which sold 1.5M+ in less than two weeks, and it had some very good deals on BF and CM. Both of those combined means we should expect a strong boost. And of course we get insider info, with Benji saying Switch sales started to soar and flew past PS4 in early November, so apart from the insane Spidey bundle, Switch is selling better. The 5 key days of the month being up 115% means that the rest of the month must be at least fairly similar to that.

Also to add, those games like Spidey and RDR2 are on a 5 year old console which has had many similar games release before. The console selling impact of them is going to be much smaller. Contrast that to the first pokemon game, which is of course a huge franchise, and the first smash game, which can sell even bigger, on a new console.

If you asked me a month ago, I would have said I expected a solid 1M+ month for Switch, but we are now hearing pokemon is doing a lot better than we thought, and insider info is pointing towards it being massively up YOY and having a comparable performance with PS4, which is close to flat YOY. Hence the ~1.4-1.5M November figures.

Last year, Switch doubled its November sales in December. A feat it won't do again this year, but when not supply constrained Nintendo consoles have always jumped up in December a lot more than the other two companies' consoles. Switch is a console which will attract families and kids, so naturally it will sell more in December as people Christmas shop. Add in a Smash launch which is looking to be the biggest ever (most pre-orders for Smash or any Switch game), and you can see why people are saying 2M+.

Obviously its hard to predict exact number yet, but I'm personally expecting 1.4-1.5M Switch in November and then for it to just sneak 2M in December. "Easy" 2.5M+ is definitely a pretty crazy prediction.

[Xevross]

According to my NPD records, PS4's best Nov+Dec was 3.12M in 2015. If Switch does better than that then that's still really good imo. I think it can manage 3.5M+ though. We'll see.

[the-pi-guy]

According to my NPD records, PS4's best Nov+Dec was 3.12M in 2015. If Switch does better than that then that's still really good imo. I think it can manage 3.5M+ though. We'll see.

Well hello mr fancy man with fancy man personal NPD records. 

[Xevross]

Well hello mr fancy man with fancy man personal NPD records.  

Haha, I love saying that. I made some nice graphs too.