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Mummelmann on 24 March 2017
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Soundwave said:
Mummelmann said:

But that's what I'm saying; I think gamers will be the biggest audience for it, and not the mass market. That's more or less the point in my post and about their whole mobile strategy. I kind of like the cartridge bit, for instance, it's a nice retro homage that old nerds like, but it's certainly not a winning feature for a market that hardly even know physical media exists. But for the Switch to approach the gilded 100 million mark and beyond, they need the mass market, which they will most likely not manage to sway.

Gamer market is big enough. 

The PS4 is not selling to "casual tablet users". Switch can sell to gamers and do well. The 3DS really didn't appeal to casual/tablet gamer types as Nintendogs/Brain Training didn't do anything for it, it got an OK Pokemon Go boost but way late in the game. 

You can still sell this thing by aiming at people who (what a novel concept) actually like video games. 

The system isn't suddenly a failure if it sells only 70-80 million instead of 100 million. 100 million is rare in the game business unless you're a Sony console. NES, SNES, PS3, XBox 360, GBA, 3DS, Genesis, PSP, etc. are all successful sysetms that didn't reach 100 mill. 

I don't think we're really in disagreement. I personally think the Switch will end up somewhere along the middle point of the Wii and Wii U, so 50-60 million if things go right, which would be a great number for any console. I don't consider anything under 100 million a failure, it's more that consoles that sell above 100 million are exceptionally popular.

The point I'm desperately trying to make is simple; if the Switch fails to appeal to the mass market, which I think it will, it will be very, very hard to sell 100 million or more like users such as Rol believe. Seeing the fairly slow pace of the Xbox One and far from mindblowing pace of the PS4 in the face of some really tame competition, it's reasonable to assume that there isn't a whole lot more room for home or "home" consoles appealing strictly to gamers either. If the PS4 manages about 100 million sales, which it should, and the Xbox One maybe half that or slightly above, that's already a fairly big installed base considering that the PS3, 360 and Wii combined probably had around 200-220 million gamers among them, and seeing how mobile gaming is still growing steadily while handhelds slow down and PC gaming having a strong resurgence, it's unreasonable to expect the Switch to be the device to attain be the final piece in the puzzle towards, or at least past, that same point. Mind you, I'm operating under the logical assumption that the vast majority of Wii owners were mass market consumers, the dreadful sales of the Wii U would suggest as much as well.

PS: Yes, I'm staying partly away from the 3DS crowd, because I don't see the major logic in automatically assuming that the Switch will inherit its userbase, especially given the growing number of dual console owners and the massive collapse of the dedicated handheld market between the 7th and 8th gen without any big actual changes in hardware or software offerings (the same concepts obviously don't hold the same appeal they used to). As for the hybrid bit; is it really convenient and appealing enough that your console connects to the TV and comes loose as a handheld all at once for it to sell to the mass market? It's still a lot less convenient than a smart device and will have a lot fewer incentives for purchase than the competition, the value of combining home and handheld concepts is grossly overstated, in my opinion.