zorg1000 said:
In the West Let's Go performed on par with a mainline title but in Japan it did less than half so Gen 8 has potential to move hardware. And that's the great thing about Switch, it can go a whole bunch of different ways with revisions. Handheld only sku-$199 Console only sku-$169 or $199 w/pair of Joy-Cons "Pro" hybrid sku-$299
At the moment Nintendo has Switch, 2DS, New 2DS XL, New 3DS XL, NES Classic & SNES Classic all on shelves ranging between $59-299. They have stated that NES/SNES Classic are done getting shipments, N3DS XL is likely out of production (210k shipped April-Dec 2018) and the 2DS/2DS XL only have another year or so before they are done. Nintendo isnt just going to let all of their lower end price points disappear so they are definitely going to offer up some type of sub-$200 Switch skus along with a potential N64 and/or Gameboy Classic to fill that sub-$100 price point. |
I don't think we'll see a sub $250 Switch any time that soon, but I guess we'll see.
Selling 20 million a year is hard too, I think that is also lost ... 17-18 million/year is still very healthy. What Sony does very well that Nintendo doesn't is they have longer tails for their hardware, so Playstation hardware often doesn't peak that high, but they sell over 6, 7, 8 years.
Whereas Nintendo tends to peak harder and then suffer a harder drop-off particularly in the back end years of their product cycle. I think they're going to have to figure out a way to prevent that, whether that's embracing a Pro model setup, more third party help, or whatever.