Global Sales Ranking - Week 99

[friendlyfamine]

Alkibiádēs said:

friendlyfamine said:

You're missing the point. Not only are those small ports that do not sell systems, but they're NOT made by Nintendo. The fact that these weren't made by Nintendo would support the proposed theory that the Switch is deliberately supply constrained as they haven't released any games that sell their hardware, so there's no reason for them to ship any/many consoles this month. Were any physical games even released in January? This month has been the worst for the Switch since possibly May.

Indies definitely help sell this system. I dare say more people bought a Switch for Rocket League or Stardew Valley than Skyrim or Doom. 

And it's not just one or two indie games, it's hundreds of them, many of which are really good.

Switch is the platform where small and medium-sized titles can and will thrive. This is what makes the Switch stand out from the PS4 and Xbox One, which are increasingly becoming more dependent on AAA titles. 

You will see more and more of these small to medium-sized titles becoming exclusive for the Switch (like Project Octopath Traveler, Bayonetta 3 and Travis Strikes Back: No More Heroes). Square recently said they want to make a new Secret of Mana game with the Switch as the target platform. Square is becoming more and more confident that these small to medium-sized titles can thrive on the Switch. Those kind of games (from big publishers) almost disappeared in the pre-Switch era. 

But what does this have to do with Nintendo supply constraining the system? Nintendo aren't going to see all these indies and suddenly stock the Switch more in January.  That's what I'm arguing here. Some people without any online gaming awareness may go into a store and have interest in the Switch seeing all the games available for it. Indies aren't going to be among those options, besides a few who have had enough success to warrant a physical distribution.