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friendlyfamine on 22 February 2018
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Miyamotoo said:
friendlyfamine said:

No new Nintendo game was released in February or January, nor any significant exclusive release. The biggest new game in January for the Switch was clearly Celeste, and that game is not exclusive. Bayonetta 2 is not exclusive either, and there were no new Nintendo releases in February. So you're ultimately left with indies, and that's not going to increase sales of the Switch. Third party companies are not jumping on board with the Switch consistently enough, and we can't afford to have months like this again. While the Switch performed decently in January overall, just imagine how much better it could have sold if there were at least 2 good physical releases, particularly from third-party developers that aren't just ports. Just that extra push could facilitate the process of Nintendo reaching their financial projection this year, and perform as competently as possible. While owners may be satisfied with the games they already own, new consumers like to see a variety of new interesting physical titles available on the shelves from time to time to see that a system is expanding as product in terms of opportunities, and thus would be more inclined to hop on board and purchase the said product. As you may have seen already with the NPD data, FighterZ and MH topped the charts, and were new games released that month. If any decently hyped up physical exclusive was released the same month (for example, Pikmin 4) it would have at least made the NPD, and it appears that no new Switch release made the NPD.

January is always slow month for releases. Fact that Bayonetta 2 is not exclusive dont change nothing beacuse was only availible on Wii U that had very limited user base (Switch already has bigger install base than WiiU), not to mentione that Switch offers full handheld mode. In February alongside Bayonetta 1/2 and plenty of Indie games, we also had Dragon Quests Builders. Porting requires time, plenty devs started devolping games for Switch after become obvious that Switch will be quite successful and that 3rd party games selling good on it, so we probably talking about past several months. Switch dont need huge releases curently to keep momentum, it won NPD for January despite had only Indie games. Offcourse that FighterZ and MH topped charts when they are multi platform games released on much bigger install bases, fact that only 3 exlusives in top 10 are Nintendo games is very impressing in any case. At end like I wrote, Switch lineup dont have anything with Wii U droughts.

I was only using the NPD as evidence to exemplify what software sales can do for system sales. NPD isn't the only monthly sales reports that matter, ultimately the Switch still lost overall for global sales in January from what we can speculate as the PS4 has been selling better in Europe for every week so far, along with the MH dominating the Japanese charts on media create for both January and February. There's no doubt that MH absolutely detracted Switch sales for both months, and the lack of software probably magnified this as well, as there was nothing to even try and compete with MH. Speaking of, Bayonetta failed to make an impact there, and while I'm optimistic it faired decently in the west, I am inclined to believe the title failed to redeem February from otherwise being a mediocre month for Switch software. The Switch could've won in overall global sales if there were more games. Nintendo can't really afford to have these consistent "no huge releases" months if they want to sell 20 million units. Right now, half of the 12 available months need to have major titles that push at least 2 million units collectively, and the holiday season can do its wonders to exceed that as an included month (maybe doing 4 million). But again, this all isn't looking likely as we're almost 3 months in- or am I missing something? January probably pushed almost 800k units WW, and unless January will be the worst month for Switch sales, they need to up their game or have something good under their sleeve. Or is Labo meant to carry it all? :/

And while it is true that "porting takes time", devs have openly stated that they are still not interested in porting games to the system, such as Blizzard and EA. The rest is all but quiet, besides Bethesda.