RolStoppable said:
You have quite the nerve. You ignore the facts I posted, spout nonsense and then accuse me of being full of shit. Switch's tie ratio is significantly outpacing the 3DS's during the same timeframe. This is what I expected all along, because I seem to be about the only person who actually put some thought into the question why home consoles have historically much higher tie ratios than handhelds. It's because people in America and Europe spend most of their playtime at home, and a home console has it rather easy to be the preferable choice over a handheld when at home. Unsurprisingly, people tend to buy more games for the system they play more, hence why home consoles comfortably outpace handhelds when it comes to tie ratio. But since Switch is a hybrid, can be conveniently connected to the TV and offers the functionality people expect from a home console, its play patterns have no trouble to match those of a home console and therefore the game purchase pattern matches accordingly. This is why Switch's tie ratio clearly outpaces the 3DS's and is projected by Nintendo to reach close to 50% of the 3DS's lifetime software sales after only a good two years on the market. Even if Wii were bundled with two games throughout its entire lifecycle (which it wasn't), your claim that more than a quarter of its software sales came from bundles still wouldn't be true. Therefore your claim is verifiable nonsense. Your approach of counting million sellers is a completely wasted effort, because I already posted better data (total software sales) in my previous post. And no, you can't explain away Switch's higher tie ratio with multiple major selling titles, because Switch will continue to get more of them because it doesn't need to share resources with another concurrent console like the 3DS. It's a foregone conclusion that Switch will receive more major selling titles from Nintendo than the 3DS did, so even if we assumed that your explanation is true, your desired result of comparable tie ratio between Switch and 3DS could still not be realized. Lastly, there is the premise that Switch will sell 90m units lifetime. You seem to realize that that is a minimum value, so if Switch sold, say, 120m lifetime, it would be all the more probable that the system sells significantly more software than the Xbox One. |
The nerve, lol.
The Switch is doing better than the 3DS, without a doubt. But then the Switch had renewed momentum being a totally different kind of device for Nintendo. It had the best launch year of any Nintendo console.
Going with VGChartz numbers for a second the software attach rate for the Switch is higher, 16 million units and 50.9 million software as of March 31st 2018. The 3DS was at 16.9 million units and 35 million software as of March 31st 2012. That is significantly different. But the 3DS didn't have Mario Kart 8, Mario Oddysey, Zelda, Xenoblade and Splatoon 2 all in the same year. Your theory of the Switch having home console attach ratios because it can be docked doesn't make much sense though. The big kicker when it comes to tie ratio is how many games a system gets. How many high selling ones especially. It directly explains why the PS3 and 360 were able to shift more software than the Wii despite selling less hardware. The Switch has already shown it doesn't have traditional home console attach ratios because just like the Wii and every other Nintendo console, it's game sales were extremely top heavy. Which is why I mentioned 1 million+ sellers as it is an indication of how healthy the broad spectrum of games that are coming to the system are selling. I'm not suggesting it's the metric of success. The Switch may well be a home console, but it's not more successful because of it.
Look, the Wii sold 915 million software. A quarter of that would be 228 million. If you add up just the Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play etc alone you get 188 million. These games sold to a demographic that aren't buying Switches. They all dominated the VGC top 10 for years after their release selling 100-200k a week. Non bundled games don't do that. But shit, I realize we could get into a whole other can of worms there. The point at hand was the Switch doesn't get that benefit in software sales.
I don't expect the Switch's tie ratio to be the same as the 3DS (4.3 on VCG). You keep saying I think this thing will mirror the success of the 3DS. I don't expect that. I have said in other posts that the home console and handheld franchises all in one place will also have a positive effect on software sales and indeed tie ratio. My whole point of reply to the original poster was that there is no guarantee the Switch will sell more software than the Xbox One. OG Xbox and 360 both settled at tie ratios higher than 11. Handhelds are less than half of that on average. Highest being the DS at 5.5. If there's any handheld that can break that mould, it's the Switch, mainly because it will have a larger stream of big releases for reasons mentioned. But it's not coming close to a console that gets full stream third party support.
It isn't cut and dry at all. The Switch might reach a 7.00 tie ratio and sell 120 million units like you said, bringing it's retail software to 840 million, but what the hell is going to drive those numbers? Pokemon didn't do it for 3DS or GBA. And it's no secret that it didn't do it for DS either. My mother owned 4 DS's, never owned another console before or since.
