Switch led Units, PS4 barely edged out dollars.
Wow. Given the small unit gap between the two, that means severely reduced sales for PS4 Pro versus its usual SKU split.
I can see that, the PRO version definitively helped.
That's hardly an insight, since the Pro is the only thing that can help push revenue higher when units are lower. But as I point out above, Pro helped a lot less this month than it usually does.
Wow at XB1X being the lead Xbox SKU in units sold for the month. That's nuts! I wonder what the actual sku split for XB1 HW is. You'd figure that'd be something they'd want to release of the split is that much in favor of their premium SKU
Still interesting, isn't it?
During August there were 2 One X SKUs (solus,
Battlegrounds), and at least 5 One S SKUs (starter, two-controller,
Battlegrounds, Minecraft, Sea of Thieves). That doesn't count discontinued One S SKUs that may still be available at retail. So making assumptions that One X overall is a third of all platform sales, and the
Battlegrounds bundle is 75% of all One X sales, that means about 25% of Xbox One sales were that SKU. With 67% of sales divided between 5+ One S SKUs, would it be surprising if none of them individually rose above 25%?
The only way this becomes interesting is if you think One X is generally less popular than assumed above. If One X usually sells a percentage more like PS4 Pro (or worse), then having the number one SKU in August could be noteworthy. But what hints we've gotten suggest that it usually sells better than Pro.
How did you got at those numbers?
Those numbers come from me, but they are not leaks. They're calculations based on constraints like YoY increases and so forth that we do know. I do my best to make them as solid as possible, so the real numbers won't be wildly different. But they're still estimates, so should not be treated as absolutely accurate.
Is Switch likely to be down in September? Was thinking last year was a 5 week tracking period versus 4 this year. Is that right?
No, not correct. March, June, September, and December are always 5 week periods.
Agreed. As mentioned above withthe prominence of digital markets and ecosystems I would think compatibility and permanence across generations will Demand such a change. Clearly if we can see such a result as we've seen from CoD MW2 as a back catalogue release already this is only going to grow in importance/prominence in the future.
The only two BC titles that have ever hit the charts are both
Call of Duty games (i.e. among the very best-selling games of all time). Even if every console next generation has full backwards compatibility, the effect to charts will be very minimal. Only monster successes from the past seem to have a chance to chart, and there just aren't that many of those.
But even more importantly, it's expected that BC for next gen will be there from the start, and 100% (or close to it). That means you can buy whatever old game you fancy any time, and it'll work. This will eliminate the ganging effect of Microsoft's "we added a popular title!" one-at-a-time approach. So instead of being rank 321, leaping to rank 8, and falling again, even the biggest games will hover around, say rank 50. In other words, we'd never see them on the charts.
It'd be more helpful if we just got previous-gen charts from NPD. That'd provide us truly new and interesting data, rather than just altering their methods of presenting the same data we get now.
Edit:
If PS4 has < 1m unit lead YTD going into December, Switch has a good chance of taking the year, I think.
This is an extreme statement. You think Switch could outsell PS4 by 900k in just December?
Smash will be huge, but that would almost certainly require a 1.9m+ month, which is PS2/Wii/GBA/DS levels. Switch is not selling anything like those machines right now. And I don't think PS4's December will be as low as last year, which makes the target even higher.
I think Switch definitely has a chance to outsell PS4 this year, but not by so much in a single month. I'd project PS4 to do 2.7m in the holidays (marginally less than the last two years). So if Switch has a ceiling at, say, 3.5m total (only Wii has ever been notably higher), then they need to be less than 800k behind by November. Right now they're 300k behind. I believe they'll drop back by another 100k in September, but reasonably flat in October. So beating PS4 will not require a legendary holiday, just a very good one. But if they somehow exit November 500k back, it'll be a challenge.
A $200 PS4 would need to be in significantly higher volunes than last year to beat Switch for Nov-Dec total. Last year all 3 systems sold basically the same in the holiday season.
No they didn't. Switch sold 400k units less than PS4 or XB1 in the holidays. My personal prediction is that Switch will outsell PS4 this holiday, by a lot. But a $199 PS4 with ample supply would alter that.
$200 PS4 demand outstripped supply big time. Sony will have to push much more stock. Switch Nov will be way highee than last year and Dec should be too. Pushing like 200-300k more than last Nov wont be enough imo.
If Sony do 3m this holiday--which is what +250k versus last year would be--then Switch will have a hard time catching them for the year. Not impossible, but it'd require a historically-huge performance. And after launch month, Switch has just never been putting up those kinds of numbers.
