NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella believes that Nintendo Switch will outsell Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 this Holiday season, as both the next generation consoles will face shortages.
Piscatella thinks that PS5 and Xbox Series X will be highly requested, but there will be few units on the store shelves, while Nintendo Switch will represent a strongly appealing option for families and regular players already in the known of the platform.
“PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles should be among the hottest holiday gifting items of 2020. Units will be tough to find with continued strong demand into 2021,” said the analyst in a new blog post.
However, “Switch will also be a hot holiday gifting item with more households picking up multiple Switch consoles in the fourth quarter,” building upon its unique proposition, with a model that doesn’t require a TV at all.
“The lack of available inventory of new PlayStations and Xbox systems will leave Switch as an appealing available option (although supply may still be difficult to find),” Piscatella added.
Lacking inventory is expected to be an issue despite Sony advising it would not have such problems as producing more units than PS4 back in 2013’s launch.
Microsoft and Sony will likely address the lack of units boosting their current-gen offerings both on software and hardware, which should lead to “the lowest price promotion in history.”
The release of the newest consoles should also offer a “growth” in the subscription segment, with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate being “a primary driver.”
As both Xbox Series X|S and PS5 will have somehow limited storage, “additional storage may become a must-have” for early adopters, so this segment should witness a surge quite soon.
The increase in next-gen game pricing is not even mentioned in the latest NPD Group, so it should not represent an obstacle to sales at all this Holiday season.
