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Kai_Mao on 19 August 2017
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fatslob-:O said:
Rain2 said:

I mean, it depends on how you look at it I guess. As a few already pointed out, the same people had both a Wii U and 3DS. I know some people (including myself) who bought 2+ 3DS due to new models. We won't ever have official numbers but the Nintendo user base could only be 65 Million rather than 75 Million already. 

If it's about being sustainable, I think a user base of 30 Million would already be enough considering they make a ton of money on games. Their developed software sells so well, I don't think they have to reach a huge user base number to be profitable to the point of being worth it. 3DS & Wii U made little money (if any) on hardware at the beginning, Switch should already be making profit without considering software.

For the sake of argument though, I think anything under 50 Million will look bad on the surface. (if 3DS truly gets no successor) Looking bad and being an actual failure are different things however. 

And there were customers who had both the WII and DS which contributed greatly to Nintendo's revenue and profits but the Switch doesn't get that same benefit. Owning the same system multiple times also doesn't help sell their software either ... 

Having a user base of 30M would be a disaster for a big company such as Nintendo itself who has to make the vast majority of their own AAA games to move their hardware. That could be acceptable if only one platform what doing that but it's just bad performance if it's their only system ... (Plus there's nothing stopping that number from dropping even further either.)

It's just not healthy for Nintendo's business to keep declining like that ... 

I personally don't think 30 million will be the end result, but you'll never know. Nevertheless, Nintendo is more focused on profits and they've only gone in the red for about 3 years (basically this current gen) out of the 30+ years they've been in the video game business.

i think other factors include costs of game development and accessories. Nintendo appears to be doing well with accessories with the pro controller, cases, other colored joy cons, amiibo, extra docks, AC adapters, etc. As for game development, unless some of their games become complete flops, I don't think will be too much of an issue. Other than Game Freak (though you could argue that the Elephant game is their first HD project), pretty much all their main teams have had HD experience from the Wii U era. And to note, even though BoTW is probably their most expensive project to date, it probably doesn't compare to the budgets of a Destiny, GTA, Horizon, and other AAA projects. Nintendo is not known to spend that kind of money for a game (like ~$200-300 million, including marketing) even for their biggest franchises. And I don't think this will bother Nintendo too much. They usually publish and develop dozens of games a year. Plus you'll probably have a few more ports of Wii I U games, which isn't bad considering the previous console sold bad and more people getting a chance to play these games isn't a bad thing.

For now, though, Nintendo hasn't shown all their cards yet. Even with an announced core RPG Pokémon game and a Metroid Prime game in the works, I doubt they have shown all they want to show for next year or even the following year.