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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why are third party games selling well on Switch?

Alkibiádēs on 11 August 2018
potato_hamster said:
Alkibiádēs said:

So you're going with your gut feeling instead of all the evidence I posted in an earlier post.

Just lol... And yes they're selling well, also compared to PS4 and Xbox One. Your problem is that you only look at the AAA market and think that's all that matters. Well, how many third party AAA Switch titles have released simultaneously with other consoles?

No, not gut feeling, knowledge and experience. You know, the opposite of a "gut feeling".

And what? You're treating the sales of a handful of indies, most of which that sell less than 500K, and a handful of third party exclusives that have sold well as "third party games selling well". Okay. Well if you when you set the bar so low for "selling well" its easy to claim anything is "selling well". My kid's lemonade stand is "growing rapidly" and "dominating the market" because he's the only one that currently has one and todays sales of 10 doubled yesterdays sales of 5.

And again, not a single argument in your post to back up your already poor case. Most of the examples I posted sold over a million copies actually and these games continue to show legs on the Switch.

Games like Rocket League, Stardew Valley, Undertale sell more than most AAA titles lol, but sure, go ahead and ignore it. 

Also selling 500K copies can be a life changer for smaller developers. Not every game has the same budget or sales expectations, but apparently you don't seem to understand that. We've already heard stories of small indie developers being saved because of their success on the Switch. Such stories are far more important than some evil multi-billion dollar company adding a few extra millions to their revenue.

Some of you guys really do have a weird fetish for AAA third party games, as if that is all that matters. Obviously games like Doom sold well on Switch or Bethesda wouldn't have announced the sequel for the Switch. 

Source:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2018/03/16/blossom-tales-developers-avoid-closing-thanks-to-switch-sales-after-poor-steam-showing.aspx



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

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potato_hamster on 12 August 2018
Alkibiádēs said:
potato_hamster said:

No, not gut feeling, knowledge and experience. You know, the opposite of a "gut feeling".

And what? You're treating the sales of a handful of indies, most of which that sell less than 500K, and a handful of third party exclusives that have sold well as "third party games selling well". Okay. Well if you when you set the bar so low for "selling well" its easy to claim anything is "selling well". My kid's lemonade stand is "growing rapidly" and "dominating the market" because he's the only one that currently has one and todays sales of 10 doubled yesterdays sales of 5.

And again, not a single argument in your post to back up your already poor case. Most of the examples I posted sold over a million copies actually and these games continue to show legs on the Switch.

Games like Rocket League, Stardew Valley, Undertale sell more than most AAA titles lol, but sure, go ahead and ignore it. 

Also selling 500K copies can be a life changer for smaller developers. Not every game has the same budget or sales expectations, but apparently you don't seem to understand that. We've already heard stories of small indie developers being saved because of their success on the Switch. Such stories are far more important than some evil multi-billion dollar company adding a few extra millions to their revenue.

Some of you guys really do have a weird fetish for AAA third party games, as if that is all that matters. Obviously games like Doom sold well on Switch or Bethesda wouldn't have announced the sequel for the Switch. 

Source:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2018/03/16/blossom-tales-developers-avoid-closing-thanks-to-switch-sales-after-poor-steam-showing.aspx

What are the sales of Rocket League, Undertale and Stardew Valley on Switch vs other platforms? Do you actually know that? Or are you just speculating that these games are selling sell on Switch compared to how they sold on PS4/X1/Vita/whatever? Because I can't find any even quasi solid numbers besides sales milestones,most of which aren't platform specific.

Ignore it? You haven't posted anything relevant. Great. These games at least made money on the Switch, but from what I can see, All of those games might have sold much  better on PS4 or X1 or Vita or PC. Even still, even assuming their Switch sales are legitimately impressive. That's three games out of thousands of third party games.  You might as well argue that the Wii U had good third party sales using such flimsy, pedestrian metrics.

Heck, take Minecraft,ZombiU and Just Dance. "Look how these three third party games sold on the Wii U! Third Party games definitely sold well on Wii U!" -  No one ever.

Yeah, I know that 500K sales can be a huge difference maker for a small indie studio of a couple dozen people. Great, you can list a couple dozen studios that are happy with a few hundred thousand sales, and no one lost their jobs. Good for them.. Still, that doesn't mean third party games are "selling well on the Swtich" just because you can list some examples of small studios that are happy with small sales.. You can find dozens of similar examples for pretty much every video game console made in the past 20 years. How does this mean anything.



Jumpin on 12 August 2018
Soundwave said:
Jumpin said:

This is an example of selective memory. The N64 was NOT very successful for third-party software. The Wii, on the other hand, was Nintendo's most successful console for third-party sales.


The N64 had 53 total million sellers.
The Wii had 160 total million sellers.

Of those 53, 38 of them were published by Nintendo. The Wii had 40 Nintendo published games sell over 1 million.
The N64 had 15 total million sellers that were third party published.
The Wii had 120 total million sellers that were third party published.

To go deeper into total sales:

The N64 sold a total of 225 million games shipped, 133 million were published by Nintendo, leaving a total of  92 million third party.
The Wii had a total of 965 million games shipped, 405 million were published by Nintendo, leaving a total of 560 million third party.

To break it down into percentages: 58% of Wii games sold were third-party.  40% of N64 games were third-party.

The total number of third-party games that sold on Wii is roughly 2.5X higher than the TOTAL number of games sold on N64, over 6 times higher than the total number third party games sold, and a total penetration rate of about double for third party games on the Wii than those compared to the N64.

To compare other million-selling third-party games:
Gameboy has 11
SNES had 29
NES had 34
GBA had 42
3DS has 19 (But 45 first party)
DS had 83 (and a whopping 59 first party)

Whether people like it or not, the Wii was the King of third-party sales when it comes to Nintendo's consoles. DS is the second most successful by quite a distance.

Honestly think that 160 million sellers is overblown, if its VGChartz data that is overblown big time. From sources like third parties themselves, the number would appear to be closer to 30 million third party million sellers to go with 36-37 or so from Nintendo. And most of those third party titles were things like Just Dance, Carnival Games, EA Active, etc. ... stuff that's not a sustainble style of gaming IP that relied on fad trends. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-selling-wii-games/r20x

Monster Hunter Tri, Resident Evil 4, Red Steel 1 (not 2), Sonic, Epic Mickey, 1 year of the Call of Duty series appear to be among the few major Wii 3rd party games that topped a million that weren't in that dance/fitness/party/puzzle game category. IMO Switch will beat this by the end of its life cycle, probably fairly easily. 

VGChartz doesn't get data from developers, they estimate/guesstimate most of the data on their site, no offence to them, and then fill in the blanks with whatever official data they get here and there. 

The difference with the N64 is you see titles like NFL Hitz, NFL Quarterback Club, NWO/WCW Nitro, Star Wars: Episode I Racer, South Park 64, Turok 1 and 2, hit a million ... that's pretty impressive considering how expensive the games were how the system only had a userbase of 33 million (mostly because Nintendo cut the legs off the poor machine by insisting on cartridge only). 

Whether you approve of the genre or not is irrelevant, they're still sales. Rock Band may not be to your tastes, but it still holds a 92%, higher than any of the N64 games you listed. The South Park game you're impressed by reviewed lower than just about every Just Dance game and spinoff.

On sources - VGchartz is a better source than your wikipedia article. VGchartz tracks sales, and (while not perfect) it aligns fairly closely to other sales trackers such as NPD and Famitsu. VGchartz also tracks years worth of data while your wikipedia article only tracks data from IGN and press releases. Wikipedia ends up with an incomplete list as a result; for example, your Wikipedia article claims Rock Band on Wii only sold 1 million, but it also cites a source from 3.5 months after release from an IGN article discussing how the Wii version sold much better than Xbox 360 and PS3 - official combined sales by the end of 2008 were 4 million units. vgchartz tracked it for several more years ending up at 2.08 million;  VGChartz is grossly inaccurate. Another example is Lego Starwars, the 4 games sold a combined 30 million units by 2012, not even 1 million of those was on Wii? For the record, VGchartz has it at 5.66 million on Wii, are they really so far off the mark?

After years of tracking, the game totals of first and third party titles tracked by vgchartz ended up 5 million below Nintendo's numbers; and their numbers track about identically with Nintendo's numbers on first-party software. This means, that in order for them to be wrong on third-party sales, an incredible coincidence would have had to occur... it would also mean that the Wii has a ludicrously high average sales of games that didn't sell over 1 million -- since the Wikipedia article you linked claims that only 419 million of the sales comes from games that sold over 1 million, that leaves over half a billion more across about 1400 other games. According to the Wikipedia sales page for N64, only 91 million sales are unaccounted for when tallying up the million sellers; if VG Chartz is wrong, then that indicates that the Wii had a much smaller number of flops than the N64 did, despite having a monstrously huge library compared to the N64 (another way to look at it: the N64 had about 10 games released per million consoles sold, the Wii had 15). Since the quality of N64 games was supposedly higher, why such a high degree of failure when compared to the Wii, despite the fact that competition on the Wii was 50% higher? Why would there be such a low degree of failure on the Wii? It doesn't add up or make logical sense.

 

The more likely and logical answer is that vgchartz is close to accurate in their sales estimates and that Wii does, in fact, have many times more third party million sellers than the N64.

Independent of million sellers, thanks to official numbers from Nintendo, we still know that on a per capita basis Wii owners bought double the number of third-party games compared to N64 owners.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 12 August 2018

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Miyamotoo on 12 August 2018
potato_hamster said:
Miyamotoo said:

 

 

Yes they do, we have numbers, publishers statements, we even have comparison of games on XB1 where around half of compared games sold better on Switch despite smaller install base, not to mention that plenty of Indies stated their games sold best on Switch. 

So we dont talk only about better sales than on Wii U, but better than on 3DS and Wii for current install base,  and even better in plenty of cases than same games on XB1. 

Also we dont talk only about 3rd party games, games are generally selling very good on Switch. 

Why do people keep using install base as if it's some extremely critical metric? This "smaller install base" console has more 5+ million sellers in the 1.5 years it's been out than the Xbox One has in the 5+ years it's been out. If there's a game on your platform that isn't bundled and is pushing 10 million+ in sales, I don't see how many "install base" argument can possibly be made since the platform owners are clearly going out and buying the games they want in droves.

How!? With point that if Switch has same install base like XB1 sales of game would be even better, but in any case we going in direction when Switch and XB1 will have similar install base.



Alkibiádēs on 12 August 2018
potato_hamster said:
Alkibiádēs said:

And again, not a single argument in your post to back up your already poor case. Most of the examples I posted sold over a million copies actually and these games continue to show legs on the Switch.

Games like Rocket League, Stardew Valley, Undertale sell more than most AAA titles lol, but sure, go ahead and ignore it. 

Also selling 500K copies can be a life changer for smaller developers. Not every game has the same budget or sales expectations, but apparently you don't seem to understand that. We've already heard stories of small indie developers being saved because of their success on the Switch. Such stories are far more important than some evil multi-billion dollar company adding a few extra millions to their revenue.

Some of you guys really do have a weird fetish for AAA third party games, as if that is all that matters. Obviously games like Doom sold well on Switch or Bethesda wouldn't have announced the sequel for the Switch. 

Source:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2018/03/16/blossom-tales-developers-avoid-closing-thanks-to-switch-sales-after-poor-steam-showing.aspx

What are the sales of Rocket League, Undertale and Stardew Valley on Switch vs other platforms? Do you actually know that? Or are you just speculating that these games are selling sell on Switch compared to how they sold on PS4/X1/Vita/whatever? Because I can't find any even quasi solid numbers besides sales milestones,most of which aren't platform specific.

Ignore it? You haven't posted anything relevant. Great. These games at least made money on the Switch, but from what I can see, All of those games might have sold much  better on PS4 or X1 or Vita or PC. Even still, even assuming their Switch sales are legitimately impressive. That's three games out of thousands of third party games.  You might as well argue that the Wii U had good third party sales using such flimsy, pedestrian metrics.

Heck, take Minecraft,ZombiU and Just Dance. "Look how these three third party games sold on the Wii U! Third Party games definitely sold well on Wii U!" -  No one ever.

Yeah, I know that 500K sales can be a huge difference maker for a small indie studio of a couple dozen people. Great, you can list a couple dozen studios that are happy with a few hundred thousand sales, and no one lost their jobs. Good for them.. Still, that doesn't mean third party games are "selling well on the Swtich" just because you can list some examples of small studios that are happy with small sales.. You can find dozens of similar examples for pretty much every video game console made in the past 20 years. How does this mean anything.

We know from Steamspy how much many of these indie games sold on PC and Switch compares favorably. We also know indie games sell less on PS4 than on Steam. 

According to Steamspy Overcooked sold between 500K - 1M copies. On Switch the latest figure we have is 600K copies sold (and at a higher price to boot). 

Again, we're not talking about obscure indie games here, but indie games that reached an audience of millions of people like Rocket League, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Dead Cells, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, etc. are huge. 

Your Wii U comparison also makes no sense as third party support for the Wii U dropped off a cliff after the launch period while the Switch continues to get great third party support. Dark Souls Remastered, South Park: The Stick of Truth, NBA 2K19, Fifa 19, Warframe, Dragon Ball FighterZ and Doom Eternal are good examples of this. And LOL at the Vita comment. There's a reason why the Vita has such a lackluster library of games. 

Even the Rage 2 devs are looking into a possible Switch version: 

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/quakecon-rage-2-interview-1202902688/



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

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zorg1000 on 12 August 2018
potato_hamster said:
Alkibiádēs said:

And again, not a single argument in your post to back up your already poor case. Most of the examples I posted sold over a million copies actually and these games continue to show legs on the Switch.

Games like Rocket League, Stardew Valley, Undertale sell more than most AAA titles lol, but sure, go ahead and ignore it. 

Also selling 500K copies can be a life changer for smaller developers. Not every game has the same budget or sales expectations, but apparently you don't seem to understand that. We've already heard stories of small indie developers being saved because of their success on the Switch. Such stories are far more important than some evil multi-billion dollar company adding a few extra millions to their revenue.

Some of you guys really do have a weird fetish for AAA third party games, as if that is all that matters. Obviously games like Doom sold well on Switch or Bethesda wouldn't have announced the sequel for the Switch. 

Source:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2018/03/16/blossom-tales-developers-avoid-closing-thanks-to-switch-sales-after-poor-steam-showing.aspx

What are the sales of Rocket League, Undertale and Stardew Valley on Switch vs other platforms? Do you actually know that? Or are you just speculating that these games are selling sell on Switch compared to how they sold on PS4/X1/Vita/whatever? Because I can't find any even quasi solid numbers besides sales milestones,most of which aren't platform specific.

Ignore it? You haven't posted anything relevant. Great. These games at least made money on the Switch, but from what I can see, All of those games might have sold much  better on PS4 or X1 or Vita or PC. Even still, even assuming their Switch sales are legitimately impressive. That's three games out of thousands of third party games.  You might as well argue that the Wii U had good third party sales using such flimsy, pedestrian metrics.

Heck, take Minecraft,ZombiU and Just Dance. "Look how these three third party games sold on the Wii U! Third Party games definitely sold well on Wii U!" -  No one ever.

Yeah, I know that 500K sales can be a huge difference maker for a small indie studio of a couple dozen people. Great, you can list a couple dozen studios that are happy with a few hundred thousand sales, and no one lost their jobs. Good for them.. Still, that doesn't mean third party games are "selling well on the Swtich" just because you can list some examples of small studios that are happy with small sales.. You can find dozens of similar examples for pretty much every video game console made in the past 20 years. How does this mean anything.

What exactly are you even arguing about? We have had multiple developers/publishers state they are very happy with their games sales on Switch which is much better than using arbitrary numbers to decide if a game has sold well.

If 3rd party games werent selling well than support would be shrinking, not growing like it is from all types of devs.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

pxrocks on 12 August 2018
KLAMarine said:
pxrocks said:

I hope every nintendo gamers are like you.because nintendo needs it.third parties are more important than ever and nintendo knows it.

The day when third parties will on nintendo platform start selling more than those typical rinse repeat games aka Mario and Pokemon then we can all say that third party sell well on nintendo platform.until then we can only hope.

I'd much rather prioritize sales on a quality basis rather than fuss about whether the game is first or second or third party.

Even When a third party games with much higher quality releases on nintendo platform nintendo gamers still gonna buy the same Pokemon mario zelda.when games like doom skyrim and other games start to sell more than Mario Zelda then iIcan say that nintendo gamers are out of their sick mindset.they always devalue third party games and overvalued nintendoNi fp games.when I ask a nintendo gamer that " are you going to buy this awesome new ip day one" then he always says"no I am gonna buy it when it drops to 20$"he rather gonna buy a rehash port like mario kart 8 for 60$(Overpriced as all nintendo games).this type of thinking is cancerous to the game industry.third party devs also work hard on their games same or even more than Nintendo's dev.so never undervalue  third party games.this is a message to all the nintendo fan/gamer/fanboys.

 

User was banned for this post ~ Angelus

Last edited by Angelus - on 12 August 2018

Mnementh on 12 August 2018
pxrocks said:
KLAMarine said:

I'd much rather prioritize sales on a quality basis rather than fuss about whether the game is first or second or third party.

Even When a third party games with much higher quality releases on nintendo platform nintendo gamers still gonna buy the same Pokemon mario zelda.when games like doom skyrim and other games start to sell more than Mario Zelda then iIcan say that nintendo gamers are out of their sick mindset.they always devalue third party games and overvalued nintendoNi fp games.when I ask a nintendo gamer that " are you going to buy this awesome new ip day one" then he always says"no I am gonna buy it when it drops to 20$"he rather gonna buy a rehash port like mario kart 8 for 60$(Overpriced as all nintendo games).this type of thinking is cancerous to the game industry.third party devs also work hard on their games same or even more than Nintendo's dev.so never undervalue  third party games.this is a message to all the nintendo fan/gamer/fanboys.

First of all, take a deep breath and type your post with a calm attitude instead of in internet rage mode. Your post scratches the border to unreadability. Also I have worries for your blood pressure reading your post.

Which third party game with higher quality was released on Nintendo platforms? You  name Skyrim, but while Skyrim is a great game, it is riddled with glitches and minor problems. It is still a good game, but Zelda or Xenoblade Chronicles have just a much higher quality and better polish.

Octopath traveler is such a game with high quality, and it actually sold well. So you see, third parties just have to release quality games for good sales.



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KLAMarine on 12 August 2018
pxrocks said:
KLAMarine said:

I'd much rather prioritize sales on a quality basis rather than fuss about whether the game is first or second or third party.

Even When a third party games with much higher quality releases on nintendo platform nintendo gamers still gonna buy the same Pokemon mario zelda.

How does one objectively measure quality?

pxrocks said:

when games like doom skyrim and other games start to sell more than Mario Zelda

They do sometimes. Doom and Skyrim have the luxury of selling across more than one platform. Tetris, Minecraft, and Overwatch sold HUGE in part because they exist on > 1 platform.

pxrocks said:

then iIcan say that nintendo gamers are out of their sick mindset.

Buying games that appeal to them doesn't make them sick.

pxrocks said:

they always devalue third party games and overvalued nintendoNi fp games.when I ask a nintendo gamer that " are you going to buy this awesome new ip day one" then he always says"no I am gonna buy it when it drops to 20$"he rather gonna buy a rehash port like mario kart 8 for 60$(Overpriced as all nintendo games).this type of thinking is cancerous to the game industry.third party devs also work hard on their games same or even more than Nintendo's dev.so never undervalue  third party games.this is a message to all the nintendo fan/gamer/fanboys.

New IP being outsold by established IP is par for the course all across the industry, not just in Nintendo's corner.



potato_hamster on 12 August 2018
Miyamotoo said:
potato_hamster said:

Why do people keep using install base as if it's some extremely critical metric? This "smaller install base" console has more 5+ million sellers in the 1.5 years it's been out than the Xbox One has in the 5+ years it's been out. If there's a game on your platform that isn't bundled and is pushing 10 million+ in sales, I don't see how many "install base" argument can possibly be made since the platform owners are clearly going out and buying the games they want in droves.

How!? With point that if Switch has same install base like XB1 sales of game would be even better, but in any case we going in direction when Switch and XB1 will have similar install base.

How do you know these games would sell better if the install base was bigger?

For example. Take the NBA 2K games on PS4.

NBA 2K16: 3.97M
NBA 2K17: 3.51M (install base increased by 21 million)
NBA 2K18: 3.19M (install base increased by over 10 million so far this year)

By your logic should the sales of these games increased year over year based on the increased install base, instead of decreasing?