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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Upgraded Switch model announced: Same price, battery life of 4.5 to 9 hours - Launches in August (Americas, Japan) and September (Others)

curl-6 on 17 July 2019

There is no need for a "Switch Pro", and no need for a Switch successor before 2023 at the earliest.

The market is clearly happy with the level of power the Switch offers. Graphics aren't what people are buying it for, nor are AAA multiplats, so the idea that it needs to be stronger and get PS5/Scarlet ports to stay relevant is simply wrong.



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Soundwave on 17 July 2019
curl-6 said:

There is no need for a "Switch Pro", and no need for a Switch successor before 2023 at the earliest.

The market is clearly happy with the level of power the Switch offers. Graphics aren't what people are buying it for, nor are AAA multiplats, so the idea that it needs to be stronger and get PS5/Scarlet ports to stay relevant is simply wrong.

Things can change in a hurry, Wii went from a top brand to a brand that was fizzling out in about 2 years flat. 

Nintendo systems often look strong in year 3 ... by year 4/5 it can quickly be a different story. 

The only post SNES Nintendo system that "finished strong" in a full life cycle has been the DS, everything else they seem to run into real problems by after the 3rd anniversary of launch. 

And the DS had some unrepeatable factors, it had a slow launch due to it being rushed to market to replace the GBA and compete with the PSP, it really did not find its legs until about late 2005 even really 2006 with the DS Lite "reboot". That and it had the whole touch screen gaming to itself before smartphones completely ate that market for lunch. 

Switch really can't rely on either of those factors. 



curl-6 on 17 July 2019
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

There is no need for a "Switch Pro", and no need for a Switch successor before 2023 at the earliest.

The market is clearly happy with the level of power the Switch offers. Graphics aren't what people are buying it for, nor are AAA multiplats, so the idea that it needs to be stronger and get PS5/Scarlet ports to stay relevant is simply wrong.

Things can change in a hurry, Wii went from a top brand to a brand that was fizzling out in about 2 years flat. 

Nintendo systems often look strong in year 3 ... by year 4/5 it can quickly be a different story. 

Past trends are not an indicator of how Switch will perform, both the system and its circumstances are unlike any prior Nintendo system, and in particular very unlike the Wii.



Soundwave on 17 July 2019
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

Things can change in a hurry, Wii went from a top brand to a brand that was fizzling out in about 2 years flat. 

Nintendo systems often look strong in year 3 ... by year 4/5 it can quickly be a different story. 

Past trends are not an indicator of how Switch will perform, both the system and its circumstances are unlike any prior Nintendo system, and in particular very unlike the Wii.

It's a Nintendo system, that means it largely has to sell off the back of about 10 major IP. That's kind of how it goes. The problem with this set up is it doesn't allign with a 5-6 year product cycle which was intended for the NES/SNES (which had 100% 3rd party backing so Nintendo didn't have to carry the whole damn system on their shoulders). 

The issue with the current Nintendo setup is by about year 3 ... most of their franchises, they've already used on the system, and looking at the Switch this is true also -- 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, 2D Mario + Mario Maker, Pokemon x2, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Fire Emblem, even Animal Crossing will launch in March. 

So sure you can release even a BOTW2 in 2020 say, but it's not going to sell systems like some new IP would, because by that point so many people who would buy a system for a Zelda game already own the Switch because the original BOTW already gave them more than enough reason to jump in. The main audience for a BOTW2 are going to be BOTW fans ... who already own the system by 2020. 

The 5-6 year cycle made sense when you had the NES/SNES and Nintendo didn't have to push so hard and had a lot more help from developers. 

But post NES-SNES ... look at every Nintendo system basically outside of the DS, every one (not just Wii) has very sizable declines after the 3rd full year on market. "Make more Mario and Zelda and Pokemon games" isn't really the answer either because you just run up against a wall of basically selling to the same audience that already has a Switch by that point. 

To build a userbase, Nintendo has to expend so many of their top IP, because they don't get a lot of dev support. So by year 3 they've basically used most of their top end IP on the system, and those games are usually great and bring in a lot of the people who want that experience, but the downside is you're kind out of killer bullets about half way through a 6 year cycle. 

I think this is kind of their fundamental problem that they've never really solved since the SNES ... they have an incredible IP catalog, but on its own it's really only enough to power high sales for about 3 years before notable decline starts to creep in. The DS is the only post-SNES system they've been able to release that really bypassed that issue but it had a lot of things going for it that really can't be repeated. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 17 July 2019

Cerebralbore101 on 17 July 2019
Soundwave said:
PAOerfulone said:

Eh, I'll stick with my original launch model for now and may upgrade when the time and price is right.

Also, to the people who are thinking Switch 2 will launch in before 2023...

Let's break it down.

The 3DS had 6 full years on the market before the Switch came out (because the Switch is a successor to the 3DS as well, no matter what Nintendo says.) And right now, the Switch is outpacing the 3DS in sales and that pace is only going to get bigger and bigger. Eventually, the Switch will blow the 3DS out of the water in lifetime sales. Whatever the 3DS' final total ends up being, add 20 million to it and that's the MINIMUM of what the Switch will sell in its lifetime. Why would Nintendo make the extremely stupid and boneheaded decision to cut the Switch's life cycle short when it has far stronger sales momentum and software support than the 3DS ever had? March 2023 should be the absolute earliest Switch 2 will launch, since the would be a full 6 year cycle for Switch 1. Anything earlier than that is just ludicrous.

What you're not really factoring in to that is 3DS sales were pretty piss poor by year 4/5. Nintendo's been able to skirt that issue usually by having two hardware systems so that when one is in a down cycle like that they at least have some sales coming from elsewhere. 

I don't think Nintendo is cool with having low sales like that towards the end of the life cycle especially if Switch is basically their only system. 

6 year cycles are stupid for Nintendo, especially when they basically use up most of their AAA IP by year 3 ... so you have 3 years of basically sequels that aren't going to bring in huge new waves of audiences because the predacessor already did that (guess what ... BOTW2 won't sell as many systems as BOTW did in part because BOTW is so successful at selling and bringing in people who would be interested in a game like that). 

Nintendo spent 2014 and 2015 supporting the Wii U instead of the 3DS. If you look at 2014, and 2015 3DS only got remakes from Nintendo, and no original games. That's why sales were lower than previous years for 3DS. Switch won't have this problem though, because Nintendo isn't going to suddenly abandon Switch in 2020, and 2021 for some new handheld, or console. 



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curl-6 on 17 July 2019
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

Past trends are not an indicator of how Switch will perform, both the system and its circumstances are unlike any prior Nintendo system, and in particular very unlike the Wii.

It's a Nintendo system, that means it largely has to sell off the back of about 10 major IP. That's kind of how it goes. The problem with this set up is it doesn't allign with a 5-6 year product cycle which was intended for the NES/SNES (which had 100% 3rd party backing so Nintendo didn't have to carry the whole damn system on their shoulders). 

The issue with the current Nintendo setup is by about year 3 ... most of their franchises, they've already used on the system, and looking at the Switch this is true also -- 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, 2D Mario + Mario Maker, Pokemon x2, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Fire Emblem, even Animal Crossing will launch in March. 

So sure you can release even a BOTW2 in 2020 say, but it's not going to sell systems like some new IP would, because by that point so many people who would buy a system for a Zelda game already own the Switch because the original BOTW already gave them more than enough reason to jump in. 

The 5-6 year cycle made sense when you had the NES/SNES and Nintendo didn't have to push so hard and had a lot more help from developers. 

But post NES-SNES ... look at every Nintendo system basically outside of the DS, every one (not just Wii) has very sizable declines after the 3rd full year on market. 

Past events aren't necessarily an indication of future ones; people said BOTW wouldn't pass 10 million cos no Zelda never had and look how that turned out. Switch's market situation is different from any of its predecessors.

At the end of the day, it's on track to pass 100 million and is reaping very healthy profits for Nintendo, there's simply no reason to cut that short with a premature successor. That would just be flushing money down the drain.



Pyro as Bill on 17 July 2019
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

Past trends are not an indicator of how Switch will perform, both the system and its circumstances are unlike any prior Nintendo system, and in particular very unlike the Wii.

It's a Nintendo system, that means it largely has to sell off the back of about 10 major IP. That's kind of how it goes. The problem with this set up is it doesn't allign with a 5-6 year product cycle which was intended for the NES/SNES (which had 100% 3rd party backing so Nintendo didn't have to carry the whole damn system on their shoulders). 

The issue with the current Nintendo setup is by about year 3 ... most of their franchises, they've already used on the system, and looking at the Switch this is true also -- 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, 2D Mario + Mario Maker, Pokemon x2, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Fire Emblem, even Animal Crossing will launch in March. 

So sure you can release even a BOTW2 in 2020 say, but it's not going to sell systems like some new IP would, because by that point so many people who would buy a system for a Zelda game already own the Switch because the original BOTW already gave them more than enough reason to jump in. The main audience for a BOTW2 are going to be BOTW fans ... who already own the system by 2020. 

The 5-6 year cycle made sense when you had the NES/SNES and Nintendo didn't have to push so hard and had a lot more help from developers. 

But post NES-SNES ... look at every Nintendo system basically outside of the DS, every one (not just Wii) has very sizable declines after the 3rd full year on market. "Make more Mario and Zelda and Pokemon games" isn't really the answer either because you just run up against a wall of basically selling to the same audience that already has a Switch by that point. 

To build a userbase, Nintendo has to expend so many of their top IP, because they don't get a lot of dev support. So by year 3 they've basically used most of their top end IP on the system, and those games are usually great and bring in a lot of the people who want that experience, but the downside is you're kind out of killer bullets about half way through a 6 year cycle. 

I think this is kind of their fundamental problem that they've never really solved since the SNES ... they have an incredible IP catalog, but on its own it's really only enough to power high sales for about 3 years before notable decline starts to creep in. The DS is the only post-SNES system they've been able to release that really bypassed that issue but it had a lot of things going for it that really can't be repeated. 

Assuming you're 100% correct, how would a 'Pro' help?



Nov 2016 - NES outsells PS1 (JP)

Don't Play Stationary 4 ever. Switch!

Chrkeller on 17 July 2019
Pyro as Bill said:
Soundwave said:

It's a Nintendo system, that means it largely has to sell off the back of about 10 major IP. That's kind of how it goes. The problem with this set up is it doesn't allign with a 5-6 year product cycle which was intended for the NES/SNES (which had 100% 3rd party backing so Nintendo didn't have to carry the whole damn system on their shoulders). 

The issue with the current Nintendo setup is by about year 3 ... most of their franchises, they've already used on the system, and looking at the Switch this is true also -- 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, 2D Mario + Mario Maker, Pokemon x2, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Fire Emblem, even Animal Crossing will launch in March. 

So sure you can release even a BOTW2 in 2020 say, but it's not going to sell systems like some new IP would, because by that point so many people who would buy a system for a Zelda game already own the Switch because the original BOTW already gave them more than enough reason to jump in. The main audience for a BOTW2 are going to be BOTW fans ... who already own the system by 2020. 

The 5-6 year cycle made sense when you had the NES/SNES and Nintendo didn't have to push so hard and had a lot more help from developers. 

But post NES-SNES ... look at every Nintendo system basically outside of the DS, every one (not just Wii) has very sizable declines after the 3rd full year on market. "Make more Mario and Zelda and Pokemon games" isn't really the answer either because you just run up against a wall of basically selling to the same audience that already has a Switch by that point. 

To build a userbase, Nintendo has to expend so many of their top IP, because they don't get a lot of dev support. So by year 3 they've basically used most of their top end IP on the system, and those games are usually great and bring in a lot of the people who want that experience, but the downside is you're kind out of killer bullets about half way through a 6 year cycle. 

I think this is kind of their fundamental problem that they've never really solved since the SNES ... they have an incredible IP catalog, but on its own it's really only enough to power high sales for about 3 years before notable decline starts to creep in. The DS is the only post-SNES system they've been able to release that really bypassed that issue but it had a lot of things going for it that really can't be repeated. 

Assuming you're 100% correct, how would a 'Pro' help?

the Pro wouldn't help, people would still complain that a hybrid device that has portable functionality can't do 15 TFLOPS.  



Soundwave on 17 July 2019
Pyro as Bill said:
Soundwave said:

It's a Nintendo system, that means it largely has to sell off the back of about 10 major IP. That's kind of how it goes. The problem with this set up is it doesn't allign with a 5-6 year product cycle which was intended for the NES/SNES (which had 100% 3rd party backing so Nintendo didn't have to carry the whole damn system on their shoulders). 

The issue with the current Nintendo setup is by about year 3 ... most of their franchises, they've already used on the system, and looking at the Switch this is true also -- 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, 2D Mario + Mario Maker, Pokemon x2, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Fire Emblem, even Animal Crossing will launch in March. 

So sure you can release even a BOTW2 in 2020 say, but it's not going to sell systems like some new IP would, because by that point so many people who would buy a system for a Zelda game already own the Switch because the original BOTW already gave them more than enough reason to jump in. The main audience for a BOTW2 are going to be BOTW fans ... who already own the system by 2020. 

The 5-6 year cycle made sense when you had the NES/SNES and Nintendo didn't have to push so hard and had a lot more help from developers. 

But post NES-SNES ... look at every Nintendo system basically outside of the DS, every one (not just Wii) has very sizable declines after the 3rd full year on market. "Make more Mario and Zelda and Pokemon games" isn't really the answer either because you just run up against a wall of basically selling to the same audience that already has a Switch by that point. 

To build a userbase, Nintendo has to expend so many of their top IP, because they don't get a lot of dev support. So by year 3 they've basically used most of their top end IP on the system, and those games are usually great and bring in a lot of the people who want that experience, but the downside is you're kind out of killer bullets about half way through a 6 year cycle. 

I think this is kind of their fundamental problem that they've never really solved since the SNES ... they have an incredible IP catalog, but on its own it's really only enough to power high sales for about 3 years before notable decline starts to creep in. The DS is the only post-SNES system they've been able to release that really bypassed that issue but it had a lot of things going for it that really can't be repeated. 

Assuming you're 100% correct, how would a 'Pro' help?

There's little doubt Pro/X models helped the XBox One and PS4 show unusually strong legs in the back half of their product cycle. 

To be honest, Sony/MS don't really even need a Pro model, they have enough developer support that they're still getting huge releases virtually every month even deep into year 5/6/7 without having to do anything. 

It's a concept that honestly probably works best for Nintendo that doesn't have the above luxury. Nintendo systems need a "Pro" mid-gen boost more than Sony or MS do. 

The 5-6 year product cycle for Nintendo systems made sense for the time era it was invented for -- the 80s/90s where the NES and SNES had 100% dev support, but it really has not worked well for any Nintendo system outside of the DS since. No system since DS aside has had really a rich, full product cycle without basically crawling to the finish line half dead. 

Which even then was kinda ok when you had two hardware lines, but having just one is going to be problematic if sales start to slow in years 4 and especially 5/6 where it could get ugly. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 17 July 2019

Ganoncrotch on 17 July 2019

Damn that battery life increase is very tempting, I could very well see myself buying one of these newer models as a pre christmas present for myself and then look at modifying my older model switch to install homebrew and emulation on it.

Switch sales +1 I think for me.



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