Switch vs Wii – VGChartz Gap Charts – April 2018 Update - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 June 2018 / 5,045 Views
The VGChartz Gap charts are updated monthly and each article focuses on a different gap chart. The charts include comparisons between the 7th generation and 8th generation platforms, as well as comparisons within the 8th generation. All sales are worldwide, unless otherwise stated.
Switch Vs. Wii Global:
Gap change in latest month: 3,650,690 - Wii
Gap change over last 12 months: 4,636,271 - Wii
Total Lead: 2,836,091 - Wii
Switch Total Sales: 16,671,979
Wii Total Sales: 19,508,070
April 2018 is the 14th month that the Nintendo Switch has been available for. During the latest month the Wii has closed the gap with the Switch and taken the lead. The Wii outsold the Switch by 3.65 million units in the last month and by 4.64 million units in the last 12 months. The Wii is currently ahead of the Switch by 2,836,091 units.
The Wii launched in November 2006, while the Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017. The Switch has sold 16.67 million units, while the Wii sold 19.51 million units during the same timeframe.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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It looks like a closer pairing would be with 3ds.
Not really, Wii just had its 2nd holiday season and switch will probably not die as quickly so it will be interesting in the long run.
The Wii already had 2 holiday seasons in this chart tbf.
TBH those "2 holiday seasons" don't mean anything when one was the launch of the Wii where it was consistently sold out and understocked for almost a year.
Consoles sell best at launch and the holiday.
The vast majority of consoles (PS4 / Wii / etc...):
If you launch in the holiday season you sell out, and have to wait 365 days for your console to sell at that level of inflation again.
Switch / 3DS:
Launched early that year, and had the chance to sell out (which Switch did). And then they double dipped and sold out again in the holiday season 8 - 9 months later (which Switch did).
Majority of consoles: 1 period of inflated sales in their first 365 days
Switch: 2 periods of inflated sales during its first 365 days
On top of that Switch launched globally Day 1, most of the other consoles had delayed launches.
The holiday argument doesn't benefit the Switch at all, because out of all the fastest selling consoles it's the only one to "benefit" from having both it's launch and first holiday season in the same year at different times of the year allowing it to maximize the sales for that year.
It's title of fastest selling means nothing now, because Wii has passed it, and the PS4 has passed it. 3DS after its price cut has also caught up and the gap is less than 1 million.
Before the first holiday for Switch, the Switch was constantly losing ground. Holidays brought it into the lead, the holidays for Wii brought back the Wii lead. If you contuinue the line in the first graph ignoring the holiday spike, you end up there the line goes down after the Wii holidays. So it seems like the Switch is constantly losing ground compared to the Wii and continues to do so.
The Wii was a legitimate beast of unbridalled popularity in this timeframe. Nintendo has many teams working on games that they have yet to reveal: a new 2D Mario, a Monolithsoft’s next crop of games (of which there will be up to three), the next Zelda is already ~2 years into development. Although, they have yet to reveal their most powerful franchise, coming off a phenomenon 800 million players strong. Nintendo’s strongest series, ever, hits a home console for the first time in 2019. Not even the extraordinary record setting (and current home console record holding) numbers pulled by the Wii stand much of a chance.
How about making one diagramm including Switch, Wii and PS4? I guess this one would be really awesome :) such a close race between all of them. And I guess a 3rd color wont make it confusing or unclear.
I really would love to see it!
Of course this could not be done with a gap chart, but only with a total sale chart unless you decide to make the gap chart only with PS4 vs. Switch and Wii vs. Switch.
3 graphs in the total chart and 2 graphs in the gap chart would be OK I guess.
If its true that Nintendo Consoles are front loaded, in comparison to Sony consoles for example, then I predict that the Switch will top out around 55 million. It will pass the Xbox One. The only reason why you wont get Wii levels of success is because the Wii was an actual fad. Nintendo consoles don't sell that much people forget. And I believe that Switch will track closer to it consoles than its handhelds in the end.
