TallSilhouette said:
No, they mustn't. There can be some overlap. There can be people who game on the app store as well as a handheld, obviously, but there are also many the handheld market has lost to mobile now (or home console to PC) because they no longer need a separate device to entertain themselves. I don't see what's so hard to grasp about this, or that a brand as powerful as Pokemon can create spillover while there's buzz. This is no different a point than my first reply, but for some reason you see additional support to one's argument as 'moving the goal post'. Generally, the casual market has moved on. It used to be Tetris, Nintendogs, Brain Age, or Wii Sports, then it was Bejeweled and Farmville, then Angry Birds and Minecraft, now it's Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. The Wii was cheap for a home console and its motion controls were as novel as it gets. The Game Boy was only $90 at launch and was a revolutionary device (it had that extra market). The Switch is a glorified, expensive handheld (as a home console it sucks ass). Apps cost little to nothing, have provided new addicting experiences, and can be taken with you anywhere. So long as Nintendo delivers great games with competent marketing the core will support it like they are now with Zelda and Mario, but without that casual craze it's not historically likely to break nine figures. I'm getting tired of repeating myself. |
Depends on how they handle the device IMO. As a single system sure, maybe it'll be tough. But if Nintendo turns the Switch into ecosystem of devices, yes I think they can topple the Wii.
It's taking a page out of smartphone/tablet's playbook ... why are sales for those products so high? Because they have such high refresh rates of people rebuying the hardware as new models come out.
I don't think Nintendo has to have the same rate of refreshes, but there's an in between that could develop somewhere in the middle between no new hardware and just basically cosmetic changes and nothing but for 5-6 years and maybe you have one major new revision say every 3 years.
Because Switch is a portable device, IMO the consumer base will accept this more readily than PS4 Pro or Scorpio as they are simply used to mobile devices upgrading over time. Even the 3DS has 6 different models in 6 years, but they are largely cosmetic in nature, I think Switch will take the next step and have actual hardware iteration in models like smartphones and tablets do as time goes on.
Game Boy Advance also would have outsold the Wii had it been allowed a proper life cycle and that didn't have any kind of Wii Sports or Tetris sized IP either. The main issue Nintendo has is mobile, they need to keep seperation from mobile by a large, large gap, just having buttons and thinking that alone will deter people from gaming on phones over their device is not good enough. They need to give the consumer a bigger reason, console-quality games on the go does that, even though it has Wii U+ graphics, those are still tangiably close enough to the PS4 for now that it "feels" like a portable console to consumers. That aspect of the system must be maintained.
