Oh Yes - true... I want that!

from a 1st party standpoint it seems like Nintendo has something roughly every 1.5 months this year.

Early March-Breath of the Wild & 1,2 Switch

Late April-Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Mid June-ARMS

Late July-Splatoon 2

September-Fire Emblem Warriors

November-Super Mario Odyssey

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is also slated for 2017 but I could see it being pushed back to 2018. But to counter that I almost gaurantee Nintendo has 1-2 surprises for this fall to be announced at E3, probably Smash Bros Deluxe and perhaps a medium sized game similar in scope to Captain Toad or something.

If Nintendo can keep a similar output going forward of 2 big 1st party releases every quarter along with a handful of small-medium sized indie, Japanese & kid/family titles in between and the occasional mainstream western title than it will have a solid flow of releases to keep momentum going.

Then you're predicting 40M until 31/12/2020 and 80M until 31/12/2023.

I feel compelled to make a prediction to the end of NS's life cycle too. I say 20M until 31/12/2020 and 25M until 31/12/2023. This should make things interesting.

im not sure if you have already done so but could you explain why you think Switch will do so poorly? all signs seem to be pointing at Switch being the successor to both Wii U & 3DS which have a combined 80+ million sold and so far Switch seems to have better marketing, a more desirable concept and better software output than either of them.

I know 3DS+Wii U sold about 1/3 as much as DS+Wii but to expect Switch to sell less than 1/3 of 3DS+Wii U seems like highly unlikely.

"With the small battery life of the Nintendo Switch, it can never fully replace a dedicated handheld, and the company hasn't given up on that market."

"We are not creating a successor to the 3DS right now,” Kimishima said in response to whether he believes in the two-screen approach. “We are, however, still thinking of portable systems. We are thinking of ways that we will be able to continue bringing portable gaming systems out, so yes, we are thinking of different ways to continue the portable gaming business."

(http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/nintendo-3ds-successor/)

"As for your question on the Nintendo 3DS, we believe it can coexist with Nintendo Switch for the time being."

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2017/02/06/following-the-news-of-a-successor-to-the-3ds-here-is-what-nintendo-had-to-say-about-it/#3eb2c9b86cda)

Let me know your signs pointing to NS replacing 3DS...

Technically speaking, NS does have a more desirable concept and better software output in comparison to the WiiU, just like the WiiU in comparison with the Wii (and see how that went). I expect strong sales at the beginning (just like the WiiU had) and a steep decline until death (just like the WiiU had). Maybe I'm being short-sided, but that's what I see.

Haven't the NS been innovative and catered to the handheld experience (which I believe it does to some extent) and not even strong sales at the beginning I would expect. There's the chance I'm proven wrong and NS actually becomes a huge success like the Wii, but I'm just not betting on that.

Battery life can be fixed with a revision (you know as well as I do Nintendo loves releasing revisions). There is another thread about this, Switch uses the Tegra X1 which was released in 2015. This year the Tegra X2 was released which has equel performance to the X1 at 1/2 the power consumption. It's entirely possible that within the 1.5-2 years we see a smaller, lighter, cheaper revision with a longer battery life.

3DS is over 6 years old, if they aren't working on a successor for it at the moment than it will easily be another 3-4 years until it gets one and 3DS will be long dead and gone by then. Again, my theory is that a more portable friendly and cheaper revision will release within 2 years that becomes the 3DS successor.

"can coexist for the time being". That is the key phrase, the 3DS family is 6 years old and available for as low as $80 with a large library of games for as low as $20. Switch released last month and is $300 with software up to $60. Clearly at this point in their lives they are aimed at different audiences. In the next year or two we will see 3DS sales and software support dry up while Switch will become cheaper and get a bigger software library (and probably a revision), at that point they will no longer coexist and Switch will take over.

My signs pointing to Switch becoming the 3DS successor basically is from what Iwata said in the years leading up to Switch's release about struggling to support two seperate hardware lines and aiming for a fully unified platform. That can't happen if 3DS gets a successor that isn't Switch.

Pretty much the entire world will disagree with you that Wii U had a better concept and software output than Wii U, like you are literally the only person i have ever seen say that. The concept of Wii was to get make gaming accessible to everybody and feature unique software, the concept of Wii U was to get ports of PS3/360 games. Wii had a steady flow of 1st party software with a few droughts in there (most notably mid 08-mid 09 and the final year) and had well over 100 3rd party games each year, Wii U had 3-4 months droughts between 1st party releases and only had like 100 3rd party titles in its entire lifespan.

There is a huge middleground between your prediction (20-25 million) and Wii level sales (100+ million), idk why it has to be so black & white, either a failure or a huge hit. Cant it fall somewhere in between like 40-50 million and be a moderate success?

Yeah I don't get why you think it will fail so miserably. The Switch is very obviously the successor to both the Wii U and the 3DS, It's a console that doubles as a portable, how is this not clear?? Of course Nintendo is gonna try to say Switch and 3DS will live alongside each other, they still want to sell the 3DS!! Didn't they say the same thing when talking about a 3 system strategy when they tried to say the DS and GBA would sell together with the console (or was it 3DS and DS?).

Two years from now 3DS sales should be dead and Nintendo should be able to sell perhaps a slightly smaller version of the Switch for under $200, picking up the handheld only people. With a release of a full fledged Pokemon game around then the Switch will start eating up their traditional handheld crowd.

As has been said, the Wii U + 3DS market is currently ~80 million and will be over 90 million by the time the 3DS is done selling. There is NO other handheld out or probably coming out anytime soon to compete for the 3DS market (and that's not even including the 15 million PSVita market). And it is pretty clear the Switch is going to be a lot more popular with console gamers than the Wii U, so the Switch selling the combined Wii U + 3DS market of ~90 million is a pretty good bet, give or take let's say 20 million. Saying it's gonna sell 20-25 million just honestly feels like trolling.

Don't forget the are around 15m Vita owners as well who also need their fill of portable gaming, if we're to take into account overlap of userbases (people who own more than one of these devices) I'd give a rough estimate of around 85m potential buyers.

When you factor in that many of the big hitters like Pokemon and AC (even another Zelda game will come to the platform) are still to come I just can't see only 20-25m being sold, we don't need to even take into account what their president said because not only do we have the GBA and DS situation as a reference but I recall he said at one point the were many more Wii U games to arrive.

Unless Sony release teh almighty Vita 2, of course.   

The vision and reality are always different. I trust more the claims of today than the hopes of yesterday.

Maybe we're talking about different things. I was referring to the fact that the WiiU was designed not only to deliver an innovative experience (2-screen gameplay and all the sensors, etc.) but also to cater to the HD market the PS3 and X360 were dominating. That double strategy seemed to be a better concept than the Wii (which won the previous generation with only 37% of the market share, because it was out of the HD experience). As a result, the WiiU's beginning had several top-quality HD titles from 3rd parties (that's what I meant by a better software output).

Switch is even better, once it has a more powerful machine that is also closer to the PC architecture, while keeping the previous innovations (sensors from the Wii and 2-screen gameplay from the WiiU) and going even further (with the different portable experiences). As a result, it's getting 3rd party titles that the previous Nintendo consoles didn't get.

Switch is walking the same path WiiU did and I see nothing but the same fate.