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linkink on 29 May 2019
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RolStoppable said:
DonFerrari said:

Thanks for the good post.

When all is done a similar breakthrough will give a better view. Because WiiU at 15M sales is very much distorted with the most loyal fanbase when compared to potential 100M sales of Switch.

Similar to a comparison using PSP, PSVita and PS4 would have great caveats.

And yes, I can certainly understand and accept that different games will have different appreciation depending on the public (geographic or platform). But when WiiU had similar type of games but ludicrous sales (still more in line with N64 and GC) while Switch will go near or above 3DS, shows that it being portable, a domain Nintendo have much more strength shows that being portable have helped Switch a lot.

That sounds like you are clinging to cherry-picked data in order to maintain your stance that portability is the biggest factor in Switch's success, but the complete set of data shows that Nintendo has had home consoles that were very successful; the NES sold 19m, the SNES 17m. Using games as the most important factor creates a consistent link between all Nintendo consoles regardless of their form factor.

Consoles that sold more than 15m: NES, GB/C, SNES, GBA, DS, 3DS, Switch (projected).
Consoles that sold less than 15m: N64, GC, Wii, Wii U.

Consoles with good third party support: NES, GB/C, SNES, GBA, DS, 3DS, Switch.
Consoles without good third party support: N64, GC, Wii, Wii U.

The lists are exactly the same. That the less successful Nintendo consoles are exclusively home consoles is not due to their form factor, because if that was the cause, then the NES and SNES shouldn't have been successful. What all Nintendo consoles have in common is good first party support, but the woeful third party support in four cases led to large gaps between worthwhile game releases which in turn crippled sales momentum in the long run. If Switch third party support was shaping up like Wii's, we could conclude that Switch will have a hard time to reach 15m lifetime. But since it's looking like Switch will get robust third party support similar to consoles like the DS and 3DS before it, we have the expectation that Switch will not only pass 15m, but also 20m.

A few days ago I showed you the bestseller lists for Switch and PS4 to demonstrate that Switch has had more hit games than the PS4 and in a shorter time to boot. There's still the question why the Vita sold worse than the PS4 despite portability supposedly being such a big advantage. Let's look at the lists:

PS4 software sorted by sales in Japan
PSV software sorted by sales in Japan

Looks like the PS4 had the bigger games and more of them, so that's the most obvious explanation why it sold more hardware than the Vita.

This post is not to say that portability doesn't matter at all for Switch's success; portability means convenience and that's of course beneficial. But the importance of portability is greatly overstated by you and others, because the data should make it clear that games matter much more for console sales than portability.

Why are you going back to super nes, nes era? home console market has really shrunk in japan after ps2. Even Ps2 the most successful home console of all time sold less then 3DS. You're gonna tell me 3ds had more appealing software then ps2 did in that market? obviously being handheld plays a major role. You constantly bring up the vita but the software on ps4  is basically a million times more appealing and yet it only ahead of vita by 2 million.