Zod95 said:
"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." 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?
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
