October 2017 NPD Thread! Switch #1

[DonFerrari]

Shadow1980 said:

DonFerrari said:

On that I can't disagree with you.

And this is one of the points I make to people over here that SNES wasn't the dominating console with a easy win. That in fact in USA Genesis was ahead until the new gen kicked in.

Curiously enough that would also be the last Nintendo home console to have a smooth drop after peak

Yep. The SNES won globally thanks to its resounding victory in Japan. The Super Famicom beat the Mega Drive by a 4.8-to-1 ratio, or about 13.6M units, which accounts for nearly all of Nintendo's margin of victory that generation. Sega never really did well in Japan, the Saturn, oddly enough, being their most successful console there, and it only sold about 6 million units there.

The SNES was also indeed the last Nintendo console to have decent legs, and incidentally it was the last one to have strong continued support late in life, not just from Nintendo but from third parties as well. In 1996 it had games like Mega Man X3, Super Mario RPG, Ultimate MK3, and Donkey Kong Country 3. In 1997 it had Harvest Moon and Kirby's Dream Land 3, plus a "slim" model of the SNES was released. And that's just the notable stuff. There were a lot of minor titles released, with an enhanced remake of Frogger being the last officially licensed game released for it in North America. Just the impression that "Hey, this system is still getting support" was enough to keep it selling even after the N64 was released. It wasn't even officially discontinued in America until 1999, three years after the N64 was released and only two years before the GameCube was released.

Meanwhile, support for the N64 slowed down quickly in 2001. The first half of the year was decent, with Mega Man 64, Paper Mario, Conker, Dr. Mario 64, and Mario Party 3 releasing between January and May, but the second half of the year had nothing. And support was nearly nonexistent in 2002, with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 being as far as I can tell the only game released that year for the N64. And the GameCube and Wii followed the N64 in having dwindling support nearing their respective replacement's launch, and nearly nonexistent support after that.

Meanwhile, systems like the PS1 & PS2 that had strong late-life support continued to sell decently late in life and, like the NES and SNES, had longer lives in general. The PS3 & 360 didn't have PS2-level or even PS1-level legs, but by 2012 they had already gotten close to saturation, so there was a lot fewer potential customers to sell to, but even then they had better post-replacement legs than the Wii did. Of course, the PS3 & 360 make me wonder how much longer the PS4 & XBO can keep it up at this rate before entering the terminal decline phase of their lives.

I would say PS360 had their afterife leg while still on the gen, the gen were so lenghty that they didn't had much space to sell after (besides never getting that under 99USD price).

Do you keep on the impression that after sales of SW peak and start declining they prepare the schedule for the release of the new console and also shift development to transgen+new gen exclusive, or that they decide to start the new gen and move the development and that cause the decaying? I'm more towards first case.