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Soundwave on 18 July 2019
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RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

There's little doubt Pro/X models helped the XBox One and PS4 show unusually strong legs in the back half of their product cycle. 

To be honest, Sony/MS don't really even need a Pro model, they have enough developer support that they're still getting huge releases virtually every month even deep into year 5/6/7 without having to do anything. 

It's a concept that honestly probably works best for Nintendo that doesn't have the above luxury. Nintendo systems need a "Pro" mid-gen boost more than Sony or MS do. 

The 5-6 year product cycle for Nintendo systems made sense for the time era it was invented for -- the 80s/90s where the NES and SNES had 100% dev support, but it really has not worked well for any Nintendo system outside of the DS since. No system since DS aside has had really a rich, full product cycle without basically crawling to the finish line half dead. 

Which even then was kinda ok when you had two hardware lines, but having just one is going to be problematic if sales start to slow in years 4 and especially 5/6 where it could get ugly. 

Here you are again championing Sony and Microsoft for no good reason. The Xbox One doesn't have strong legs at all, but that doesn't stop you from pretending that it does. The 3DS showed better legs and that was because of a reason that you didn't grasp: Nintendo put games on smartphones to promote their IPs which in turn led to a substantial increase for dedicated gaming hardware, so the 3DS's sixth year ended up being better than its fifth year. Nintendo shipped more than 7m units during the 3DS's sixth full fiscal year, a value that Microsoft isn't going to match with their Xbox One. Naturally, you downplayed the positive effect of Nintendo's smartphone games on their sales of dedicated gaming hardware.

Before the Switch's launch, you made it a point to tell Nintendo fans that they should be happy if the console sells 40m units lifetime because that would be good for what the Switch is; looks like Switch will have no trouble to sail past that mark. You bought into the "soft launch theory", meaning that Nintendo wasn't launching Switch in earnest until fall 2017 because its launch window games were presumably weak; we are talking about Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe here. You repeatedly proposed that Nintendo should team up with Microsoft to stand a chance in the console market and put games on Xbox; what actually happened is that Microsoft is a third party partner for Nintendo.

You have tried time and time again to analyze Nintendo in a Sony and Microsoft context and it failed you repeatedly. Now here you are acting concerned that Switch won't have strong sales after year 3, but 2020 already looks like a cakewalk, because for one, Switch still hasn't received a price cut, and two, the competition already can't keep up in 2019 and will be even worse in 2020. 2021 won't be a problem either, so it would be surprising if either the PS5 or Scarlett sold more than Switch. Given how healthy the Switch's software pipeline is, it makes the most sense to compare it to the DS, so that's the kind of sales curve you should expect, a prolonged peak.

Your obsession with a Pro model is just another chapter in your desire that Nintendo should be like Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo is doing virtually nothing of the things you want them to do and they are very successful with it. Maybe it's time that you seriously ask yourself if you actually know anything about how the console market works. You call the 3DS's sales by year 4/5 piss poor, but the Xbox One is apparently showing strong legs despite selling worse than the 3DS. You already struggle on the most fundamental level that is about comparing a couple of numbers.

"Championing MS and Sony" lol, ok, jeezus can you any more corporate obsessed? These aren't religions or even sports teams. Who cares, I'm merely citing that mid-gen Pro style refreshes do provide mid-cycle sales boosts. Argue that if you want but you probably really can't. 

I would expect sales of Switch to be solid through 2020 as I expect BOTW2 + new 3D Mario to go with AC and Bayo 3, but "2021 is a given no matter what" yeah ... no, not sure if I'm buying that kool-aid. 

By 2021, they'll likely have used up every major IP they have and even doubled down on IPs like 3D Zelda and 3D Mario. 

I think that's where they will start to see some decline, 2020 is still in the 3 year range. 2021, 2022 are more problematic I think. 

Just sequel-izing IP that are already on the Switch and selling to a big chunk of the userbase isn't going to be the be-all answer, with BOTW2 for example a large portion of the people who would be buying it are going to naturally be some of the 12 million+ that are Zelda fans that already have the Switch for BOTW1. So each successive sequel your "hardware sales bump" diminishes. 

Quality isn't the only issue, BOTW is tremendous quality, that actually works against BOTW2 being as large of a system seller because BOTW is so good that it brings in so many people to begin with that the sequel doesn't have anywhere near as large of a net to cast to get new hardware buyers from. 

New IP can certainly do the trick but it's also like buying a lottery ticket, there's no guarantee whatsoever that your new IP is going to be a big hardware driving hit.