Nintendo Switch Will Sell 40 Million Units in 4 Years
By John Jacques 22 January 2017
One analysis firm expects that the upcoming Nintendo Switch console will reach 40 million units sold within its first four years of release, putting it on PS4 and Xbox One pace.
A report this week from DFC Intelligence has predicted that the Nintendo Switch console will hit 40 million units sold by the end of 2020, a statement which more or less indicates that the firm believes the Nintendo Switch can sell numbers in similar volume to the PlayStation 4. It was almost a year ago that the PS4 surpassed 40 million sales, a process that took around 3 years to complete.
In any event, most analysts seem to agree that the Nintendo Switch will sell in much higher volume than the ill-fated Nintendo Wii U, which has sold a little more than 12 million units over its lifetime, putting it in a far distant third place behind the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. This time around, Nintendo is hoping that a strong focus on home console portability, a renewed online presence, and consistent third party support will help bring a switch to Nintendo’s recent fortunes in console sales.
Here’s what the DFC intelligence report has to say about Nintendo hitting the potential sales target:
Demand is expected to be strong and the major issue will be whether the system can attract a broad audience starting in the holiday sales season of 2017. The Switch is a compelling piece of hardware that could potentially reach a much larger addressable market. However given the limited software and Nintendo’s poor recent track record of introducing new products we have tempered our forecasts to be conservative.
We’re not sure how much of a conservative estimate that really is, considering that such a forecast would still put the Nintendo Switch high above reported Xbox One sales numbers, although Microsoft’s console has seen a dramatic rise in console sales ever since E3 2016. With both Sony and Microsoft deploying virtual reality plans for their current generation consoles, it’ll be interesting to see if Nintendo may eventually follow suit, or if it will stick to portability being the Switch’s main defining feature for this generation.
The Big N has promised that it will have 2 million Nintendo Switch consoles available for launch month, which will hopefully avoid the supply-and-demand woes that plagued recent releases like the NES Classic. The launch day Nintendo Switch will offer gamers a selection of 6 different games to choose from, with the most high profile of those being The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild.
What do you think about the Nintendo Switch, Ranters? Do you think it can sell 40 million units by the end of 2020?
The Nintendo Switch will launch on March 3, 2017.
