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Forums - Sales Discussion - Global Weekly, 31st March 2018, Software

RolStoppable said:
LethalP said:

There's no guarantee the Switch will sell more software than the Xbox One. The Switch won't have anywhere close the same attach rates as the Xbox, which has the best attach rates of any consoles other than PlayStation. Handhelds don't in general. Look at the Gameboy at 118 million hardware units, it sold 501 million software. The NES also sold 501 million software, but inside 61 million hardware units. It had nearly double the attach rate.

The Xbox will sell 500 million physical units in the end probably. The ps4 will do about 1.2-1.4 billion. Switch about 450 million. (if it sells above 90 million which is likely). 

Switch isn't a handheld and its tie ratio isn't developing like a handheld console either.

Switch hardware and software shipments by March 2018: 17.79m and 68.97m for a tie ratio of 3.88.
3DS hardware and software shipments by March 2012: 17.13m and 45.42m for a tie ratio of 2.65.

The above timeframe gives both systems roughly 13 months of availability. Tie ratios of all consoles start out low and grow over time. The 3DS will finish with a tie ratio of ~5.0, but Switch is already considerably pacing ahead of the 3DS because its hybrid nature means that it will be used like a home console by plenty of its owners, especially in America and Europe. As such, it's only logical that its software purchase patterns will closely align with the pace of a home console, so an estimated final hardware total of 90m (your example) results more realistically in a software total of 750m+, because you should expect a tie ratio of 8.0 or higher.

The Switch is a handheld, simple as that. It's built in TV out dock doesn't change that. But more importantly to the topic is that It's selling to the handheld demographic. Not the home console one. The Switch sells independently to the PS4 and X1, where as PS and Xbox substitute eachothers sales. One does better at the others expense. What matters is the market and ever since Nintendo has been doing it's own thing after the Gamecube, it's attach rates have been consistently lower and we all know why, it's lack of third party support.

The Switch being able to be a ''home console'' doesn't magically mean it will sell software like one (even if it actually was one). The Wii sold less software than the PS3 and 360. Though it did manage to have relatively strong attach rates but guess why? Because more than a quarter of it's software sales was bundled games. Switch isn't going that route.

The Switch doesn't have the steady stream of big releases to take it's software sales anywhere close to an 8.00 tie ratio, you're full of shit to think that lol. Even if we assume the Switch gets multiple 20 million sellers, that didn't take the DS past a 6.00 tie ratio and doesn't make up for the dozens and dozens of big sellers PS4 and Xbox One gets. All you have to do is look at how many 1+ million sellers a console has. Switch has 8 in 13 months. That seems a lot like a Nintendo handheld to me. The extra sales of the Switch over the 3DS in the same time could easily be explained away by the release of multiple major selling titles in it's first year, where as the 3DS was comparatively dry in that period. Switch might sell more software than the Xbox One, but even then only at retail. But it won't be a blowout.

 



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ninson95 said:
LethalP said:

The one thing the Switch has going for it that other handhelds didn't is the fact it gets every Nintendo exclusive including the traditionally home console ones. So you can add sales for 3D Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash, and other home console franchises on top of Pokemon, Animal Crossing etc. So it might have a better attach rate than the 3DS, but it's not going to be close to what Xbox One will settle at, which will probably similar to 360 and OG Xbox, maybe slightly less.

The DS had multiple 20+ million selling games yet didn't manage to sell as many software units as the PS3 or 360. The Xbox One may not get a 10+ million seller this gen at retail, but it has more games that sell 1 million+ and that's what makes up the difference.

Here's what I expect for both:

Xbox One

Hardware sales: 55 - 60 million

Tie-ratio: 9 - 10.00

Sofware sales: 495 - 600 million


Nintendo Switch

Hardware sales: 90 - 100 million

Tie-ratio: 4.50 - 6.00

Sofware sales: 405 - 600 million


I wouldn't say it's that cut and dry.


 

Sry but are you talking about attach rates or total software sales? 

Both. Basically it's tie ratio multiplied the hardware unit sales.



LethalP said:
RolStoppable said:

Switch isn't a handheld and its tie ratio isn't developing like a handheld console either.

Switch hardware and software shipments by March 2018: 17.79m and 68.97m for a tie ratio of 3.88.
3DS hardware and software shipments by March 2012: 17.13m and 45.42m for a tie ratio of 2.65.

The above timeframe gives both systems roughly 13 months of availability. Tie ratios of all consoles start out low and grow over time. The 3DS will finish with a tie ratio of ~5.0, but Switch is already considerably pacing ahead of the 3DS because its hybrid nature means that it will be used like a home console by plenty of its owners, especially in America and Europe. As such, it's only logical that its software purchase patterns will closely align with the pace of a home console, so an estimated final hardware total of 90m (your example) results more realistically in a software total of 750m+, because you should expect a tie ratio of 8.0 or higher.

The Switch is a handheld, simple as that. It's built in TV out dock doesn't change that. But more importantly to the topic is that It's selling to the handheld demographic. Not the home console one. The Switch sells independently to the PS4 and X1, where as PS and Xbox substitute eachothers sales. One does better at the others expense. What matters is the market and ever since Nintendo has been doing it's own thing after the Gamecube, it's attach rates have been consistently lower and we all know why, it's lack of third party support.

The Switch being able to be a ''home console'' doesn't magically mean it will sell software like one (even if it actually was one). The Wii sold less software than the PS3 and 360. Though it did manage to have relatively strong attach rates but guess why? Because more than a quarter of it's software sales was bundled games. Switch isn't going that route.

The Switch doesn't have the steady stream of big releases to take it's software sales anywhere close to an 8.00 tie ratio, you're full of shit to think that lol. Even if we assume the Switch gets multiple 20 million sellers, that didn't take the DS past a 6.00 tie ratio and doesn't make up for the dozens and dozens of big sellers PS4 and Xbox One gets. All you have to do is look at how many 1+ million sellers a console has. Switch has 8 in 13 months. That seems a lot like a Nintendo handheld to me. The extra sales of the Switch over the 3DS in the same time could easily be explained away by the release of multiple major selling titles in it's first year, where as the 3DS was comparatively dry in that period. Switch might sell more software than the Xbox One, but even then only at retail. But it won't be a blowout.

 

Attach rates for at least Nintendo games have increased tremendously since the Wii era… (SMO over 9 Mio, Zelda at 7.1 Mio, MK8D at 7.8 Mio with a 17 Mio switch sold). Ehm you know that when the Switch sells near as much software as the DS did that it'd be a better attach rate as the Switch probably won't match the DS hardware sales....  But we'll see… still very early in switch lifespan you know ;)



LethalP said:
RolStoppable said:

Switch isn't a handheld and its tie ratio isn't developing like a handheld console either.

Switch hardware and software shipments by March 2018: 17.79m and 68.97m for a tie ratio of 3.88.
3DS hardware and software shipments by March 2012: 17.13m and 45.42m for a tie ratio of 2.65.

The above timeframe gives both systems roughly 13 months of availability. Tie ratios of all consoles start out low and grow over time. The 3DS will finish with a tie ratio of ~5.0, but Switch is already considerably pacing ahead of the 3DS because its hybrid nature means that it will be used like a home console by plenty of its owners, especially in America and Europe. As such, it's only logical that its software purchase patterns will closely align with the pace of a home console, so an estimated final hardware total of 90m (your example) results more realistically in a software total of 750m+, because you should expect a tie ratio of 8.0 or higher.

The Switch is a handheld, simple as that.

 

Hybrid*



ninson95 said:
LethalP said:

The Switch is a handheld, simple as that. It's built in TV out dock doesn't change that. But more importantly to the topic is that It's selling to the handheld demographic. Not the home console one. The Switch sells independently to the PS4 and X1, where as PS and Xbox substitute eachothers sales. One does better at the others expense. What matters is the market and ever since Nintendo has been doing it's own thing after the Gamecube, it's attach rates have been consistently lower and we all know why, it's lack of third party support.

The Switch being able to be a ''home console'' doesn't magically mean it will sell software like one (even if it actually was one). The Wii sold less software than the PS3 and 360. Though it did manage to have relatively strong attach rates but guess why? Because more than a quarter of it's software sales was bundled games. Switch isn't going that route.

The Switch doesn't have the steady stream of big releases to take it's software sales anywhere close to an 8.00 tie ratio, you're full of shit to think that lol. Even if we assume the Switch gets multiple 20 million sellers, that didn't take the DS past a 6.00 tie ratio and doesn't make up for the dozens and dozens of big sellers PS4 and Xbox One gets. All you have to do is look at how many 1+ million sellers a console has. Switch has 8 in 13 months. That seems a lot like a Nintendo handheld to me. The extra sales of the Switch over the 3DS in the same time could easily be explained away by the release of multiple major selling titles in it's first year, where as the 3DS was comparatively dry in that period. Switch might sell more software than the Xbox One, but even then only at retail. But it won't be a blowout.

 

Attach rates for at least Nintendo games have increased tremendously since the Wii era… (SMO over 9 Mio, Zelda at 7.1 Mio, MK8D at 7.8 Mio with a 17 Mio switch sold). Ehm you know that when the Switch sells near as much software as the DS did that it'd be a better attach rate as the Switch probably won't match the DS hardware sales....  But we'll see… still very early in switch lifespan you know ;)

The Switch has potential to sell 100+ million units. We don't know how long Nintendo plans on supporting the Switch so it might go beyond that if all goes well. It's going to have the usual staple of 10 million+ sellers here on VGChartz and then some. SMO could do 20 million, So could Pokemon, and God knows what else. This I do not dispute. But one thing is certain, the Switch isn't going to have an attach rate like the Xbox One or PS4. The PS4 had 25 1 million sellers 13 months in, the Xbox One had 16. Switch has 8, the 3DS had 5. But the 3DS only had Mario Kart 7 at that point, the Switch got far more in it's first year.

It doesn't get enough game releases to have an attach rate like the Xbox or PS. Like I said in the other post, it might sell more software than the Xbox One, but it's not certain.



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PortisheadBiscuit said:
LethalP said:

The Switch is a handheld, simple as that.

 

Hybrid*

Semantics. It's in the handheld market.



LethalP said:
PortisheadBiscuit said:

Hybrid*

Semantics. It's in the handheld market.

It's marketed as both. 



RolStoppable said:
LethalP said:

The Switch is a handheld, simple as that. It's built in TV out dock doesn't change that. But more importantly to the topic is that It's selling to the handheld demographic. Not the home console one. The Switch sells independently to the PS4 and X1, where as PS and Xbox substitute eachothers sales. One does better at the others expense. What matters is the market and ever since Nintendo has been doing it's own thing after the Gamecube, it's attach rates have been consistently lower and we all know why, it's lack of third party support.

The Switch being able to be a ''home console'' doesn't magically mean it will sell software like one (even if it actually was one). The Wii sold less software than the PS3 and 360. Though it did manage to have relatively strong attach rates but guess why? Because more than a quarter of it's software sales was bundled games. Switch isn't going that route.

The Switch doesn't have the steady stream of big releases to take it's software sales anywhere close to an 8.00 tie ratio, you're full of shit to think that lol. Even if we assume the Switch gets multiple 20 million sellers, that didn't take the DS past a 6.00 tie ratio and doesn't make up for the dozens and dozens of big sellers PS4 and Xbox One gets. All you have to do is look at how many 1+ million sellers a console has. Switch has 8 in 13 months. That seems a lot like a Nintendo handheld to me. The extra sales of the Switch over the 3DS in the same time could easily be explained away by the release of multiple major selling titles in it's first year, where as the 3DS was comparatively dry in that period. Switch might sell more software than the Xbox One, but even then only at retail. But it won't be a blowout.

You have quite the nerve. You ignore the facts I posted, spout nonsense and then accuse me of being full of shit.

Switch's tie ratio is significantly outpacing the 3DS's during the same timeframe. This is what I expected all along, because I seem to be about the only person who actually put some thought into the question why home consoles have historically much higher tie ratios than handhelds. It's because people in America and Europe spend most of their playtime at home, and a home console has it rather easy to be the preferable choice over a handheld when at home. Unsurprisingly, people tend to buy more games for the system they play more, hence why home consoles comfortably outpace handhelds when it comes to tie ratio. But since Switch is a hybrid, can be conveniently connected to the TV and offers the functionality people expect from a home console, its play patterns have no trouble to match those of a home console and therefore the game purchase pattern matches accordingly. This is why Switch's tie ratio clearly outpaces the 3DS's and is projected by Nintendo to reach close to 50% of the 3DS's lifetime software sales after only a good two years on the market.

Even if Wii were bundled with two games throughout its entire lifecycle (which it wasn't), your claim that more than a quarter of its software sales came from bundles still wouldn't be true. Therefore your claim is verifiable nonsense.

Your approach of counting million sellers is a completely wasted effort, because I already posted better data (total software sales) in my previous post. And no, you can't explain away Switch's higher tie ratio with multiple major selling titles, because Switch will continue to get more of them because it doesn't need to share resources with another concurrent console like the 3DS. It's a foregone conclusion that Switch will receive more major selling titles from Nintendo than the 3DS did, so even if we assumed that your explanation is true, your desired result of comparable tie ratio between Switch and 3DS could still not be realized.

Lastly, there is the premise that Switch will sell 90m units lifetime. You seem to realize that that is a minimum value, so if Switch sold, say, 120m lifetime, it would be all the more probable that the system sells significantly more software than the Xbox One.

The nerve, lol.

The Switch is doing better than the 3DS, without a doubt. But then the Switch had renewed momentum being a totally different kind of device for Nintendo. It had the best launch year of any Nintendo console.

Going with VGChartz numbers for a second the software attach rate for the Switch is higher, 16 million units and 50.9 million software as of March 31st 2018. The 3DS was at 16.9 million units and 35 million software as of March 31st 2012. That is significantly different. But the 3DS didn't have Mario Kart 8, Mario Oddysey, Zelda, Xenoblade and Splatoon 2 all in the same year. Your theory of the Switch having home console attach ratios because it can be docked doesn't make much sense though. The big kicker when it comes to tie ratio is how many games a system gets. How many high selling ones especially. It directly explains why the PS3 and 360 were able to shift more software than the Wii despite selling less hardware. The Switch has already shown it doesn't have traditional home console attach ratios because just like the Wii and every other Nintendo console, it's game sales were extremely top heavy. Which is why I mentioned 1 million+ sellers as it is an indication of how healthy the broad spectrum of games that are coming to the system are selling. I'm not suggesting it's the metric of success. The Switch may well be a home console, but it's not more successful because of it.

Look, the Wii sold 915 million software. A quarter of that would be 228 million. If you add up just the Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play etc alone you get 188 million. These games sold to a demographic that aren't buying Switches. They all dominated the VGC top 10 for years after their release selling 100-200k a week. Non bundled games don't do that. But shit, I realize we could get into a whole other can of worms there. The point at hand was the Switch doesn't get that benefit in software sales.

I don't expect the Switch's tie ratio to be the same as the 3DS (4.3 on VCG). You keep saying I think this thing will mirror the success of the 3DS. I don't expect that. I have said in other posts that the home console and handheld franchises all in one place will also have a positive effect on software sales and indeed tie ratio. My whole point of reply to the original poster was that there is no guarantee the Switch will sell more software than the Xbox One. OG Xbox and 360 both settled at tie ratios higher than 11. Handhelds are less than half of that on average. Highest being the DS at 5.5. If there's any handheld that can break that mould, it's the Switch, mainly because it will have a larger stream of big releases for reasons mentioned. But it's not coming close to a console that gets full stream third party support.

It isn't cut and dry at all. The Switch might reach a 7.00 tie ratio and sell 120 million units like you said, bringing it's retail software to 840 million, but what the hell is going to drive those numbers? Pokemon didn't do it for 3DS or GBA. And it's no secret that it didn't do it for DS either. My mother owned 4 DS's, never owned another console before or since.

 

 

 

 



Pretty good sales for Far Cry 5!



CaptainExplosion said:
PortisheadBiscuit said:

It's marketed as both. 

So much for that weird new Nintendo patent being for a handheld system then.

The switch without a Dock possibly. And they often patent things they never actually go onto produce. Switch is both home console and handheld. It has the advantage of tapping into both markets.