According to a recently published blog by NPD Group's Mat Piscatella, it's going to be a vintage year for Nintendo with the stat-tracking group predicting that the Switch will be the best-selling console of 2018 thanks to likely strong sales of Pokémon and Smash Bros. later this year. What's more, the Switch has the second highest time-aligned installed base ever, only trailing the Wii.
The predictive text also suggests that there'll be champagne corks popping all over the place, with a predicted 17.5 million consoles sold across the US alone, more than 4 million for each platform holder. On top of that, PS4 and Xbox One are both ahead of PS2/Xbox and PS3/360 respectively in terms of time-aligned like-for-like sales. More to that point, the PS4 continues to sell above expectations, and Xbox One has apparently enjoyed very strong growth this year that should continue into 2019.
But wait, there's more, with NPD predicting that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be biggest seller of the year, followed by Black Ops 4 and Battlefield V. Obviously these three games have yet to see the light of day, so take all of these musings from the crystal ball with a pinch of salt, even if the organisation has a pretty good track record when it comes to predicting the future.