zorg1000 said:
Your problem is that you keep wanting to talk about games in isolation when that's not what sells a system. Those games will cut it because there is a steady flow of quality titles from Nintendo & 3rd parties (Japanese, Western & indies) for the rest of the year. Both of the Wii U ports of 2017 are exceptions to your made up rule, Mario Kart & Pokken both are going to do significantly better than their original releases. The Wii U ports of 2018 could very well do the same, especially DKC which averaged about 5 million before Wii U where it did like 1/3 of that. Yes, obviously more big games results in potentially bigger sales, that goes without saying but by the logic you are using we would have to say every year is poorly planned because even in a stacked year could be better with a couple more big games.
We only have 1.5 months of vgchartz estimates but we also have things like Media Create and Amazon rankings which show no notable drop in sales in the 2nd half of February or early March and with Kirby coming this week there is no reason to expect a drop in the coming weeks.
Media Create will have Switch at 650-700k & NPD wil have 900k-1m putting Japan+US at ~1.6 million in Q1. Add in Europe, Canada, Latin America, Australia & Asia and you are looking at ~2.5 million or so which lines right up with their forcast for the quarter of ~2.9 million shipped.
The games of Spring/Summer do not need to be massive system sellers, they just need to keep momentum going and considering a handful of those games are going to sell 1-2 million and another handful will sell 300k-1m, a dozen plus small-medium sized hits is enough to maintain momentum.
What will push hardware from Sept onward? Smash+Fire Emblem+Yoshi would be enough for the holiday period, thats a 10+ million seller and two ~2 million sellers, along with whatever 3rd parties have planned. Thats just as good or better than last years holiday period. |
I'm not saying sales are going to fall, i'm saying sales aren't higher because Nintendo did not have a good plan.
And no, i don't believe those games will do for Switch what the likes of Mario, Zelda, etc. do.
If you believe this, fine. I don't.
I singled out MK because, unlike other ports, that one managed to almost recapture all it's Wii U audience with almost the same number of consoles sold as the Wii U.
That alone shows that Wii U was indeed holding it back.
That game is a true system seller.
Doing better because of a bigger audience isn't that much of a victory.
Why do you think DKC will do great numbers? Wii U wasn't holding it back. Just look at the games close to it (below and above) and you'll see that.
"but by the logic you are using we would have to say every year is poorly planned because even in a stacked year could be better with a couple more big games."
That's not really a fair argument.
We are not discussing a scenario where 2018 is really similar to 2017 and we are left wondering if just one more system seller would make a perceivable difference or not. The gap between 2017 and 2018 is enormous and that leaves more than room for growth.
I can't affirme that sales will or won't drop staring April.
I noticed that with PS4 and that was valid for every single year since release.
If sales don't drop for Switch i'll be surprised, but clearly it won't be because of Kirby. The same that sales have been really good in February and that's not due to a port of Bayonetta and Payday 2.
As an exemple, people speak highly of FE, but did it managed to anything significant for HW?
Short term boost in Japan, Europe and the US. Sales started going down a couple of weeks later.
The second game?
In the US: sales actually fell when it released and kept falling the next couple of weeks; in Europe: same pattern, although on a smaller scale. In Japan: the same pattern.
So, just because a game can sell in the (few) millions, doesn't mean it will do anything relevant for HW. Hence, selling mostly to it's userbase.
I'm not questioning Nintendo's ability to achieve it's goals. I'm only saying that things could be better if they prepared better.
Don't really understand all the fuss around such a claim.
Smash + FE + Yoshi , is not what i would call a strong holiday line-up.
Lonely_Dolphin said:
Your first paragraph has nothing to do with anything, unless you're trying to say that because they underestimated themselves their resulting sales don't matter or something nonsensical like that. The basis for my accusation is what you said: "My point is that Switch could have done better, could be doing doing even better if..." and just now: "My concern is that they could be doing more and they aren't." Again pointless because you can always say that no matter how well Nintendo sells or how much Nintendo does, like you are right now despite them selling very well by any standard which proves they're doing enough and planned very well. "So far bad for 2018," so you seriously think 200k a week is bad!? Like Zorg explained it's safe to assume it's been doing 200k a week up until now, and obviously it's not going to go down now that the consistent stream of games is starting up again, so very safe to assume 2018 will be well up YoY. Smaller games aren't system sellers but do make a system more appealing, that's pretty contradictory. Plus you clearly don't believe yourself about increasing appeal as otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation and instead you'd recognize that the sheer number and quality of smaller titles are plenty enough to maintain/increase sales momentum. |
"Again pointless because you can always say that no matter how well Nintendo sells or how much Nintendo does, like you are right now despite them selling very well by any standard which proves they're doing enough and planned very well."
No, you can't always do better. That exaggeration isn't true.
In this context, there's a big gap between how Nintendo is doing and how they could do if 2018 had been better prepared. Not to mention that all this will influence 2019's sales.
Who said anything about sales?
I was talking about release shcedules and how a better for 2018 could/would have resulted in better sales.
PS4 has been doing great, hasn't it? Even up YoY, right? Did that stop PS4 from droping in sales during the second and most of third semester, like, every year? No.
Why is that contradictory? Just because a game isn't a system seller, doesn't mean it's as if it doesn't exist or so bad that people pretend it doesn't exist.
Not all game libraries have the same appeal or value.
The more [the game library] is made off system sellers, the better. Below that, the less appeal it will have until it reaches a point where, for the majority of gamers, it just doesn't justify buying a console (like Wii U).
