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colafitte on 30 July 2019
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Marth said:
colafitte said:
The impression i have with Switch after these numbers is mixed.

It's obvious 1st party games sales and US, EU and JP hardware sales have been very strong, but Nintendo still has work to do in other areas, because if Switch has sold 210M games and MK 8 DX, SMO, SSBU, ZBOTW, PKLG, SP2, SMP, NSMBUD, 1-2S, and MTenA sum already almost 100M of those sales, that means the rest of the games (mostly 3rd party games) are not selling that well....

I presume is part of having such a strong 1st party lineup, it eats everything else i guess....

And 2'1M shipped this quarter and 18M projected for the total FY is lower than i expected, although is on par of what initially did at the start of the year. I guess we have been distracted by the lack of complete information about worldwide sales and we made too much fuzz about US, JP and some european countries sales... Despite all of this, if Switch ships 18M this FY it would be a phenomenal year and is still on pace to be between 3DS and Wii numbers in the end.

Switch will always be carried by 1st party software sales.

It came at a weird point in the console lifecycle so the FIFA/Madden/etc crowd already had their preferred console for those big 3rd party games.
And its missing a lot of the big hitters when it comes to 3rd party. Like Call of Duty / Battlefield / GTA / Far Cry / Assassins Creed (or does that poor AC3 Remaster count?)

The demographics of Switch users is much older then other Nintendo consoles so pretty sure the audience would be there for those games.
Witcher could become one of the better 3rd party titles for Switch. MK11 already had a really strong performance on Switch according to NPD.

I still think hardware will be more than 18M. They had to ship less this quarter to reduce inventory as this current Switch model gets phased out completely. The new model goes on sale in a few days.

Yeah, you're correct of course, but what i meant is that Nintendo, with this strategy bets all the success of their home console in just a few games. If the main Mario and/or Zelda are a huge commercial and/or criticial success it's almost a guarantee the console is going to be a succeess too and other first party IP's are going to receive the attention to flourish and sell well (like Mario Party, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Donkey Kong, ...etc). But, if the main Mario or Zelda game is not really popular or a sales phenomena it drags the sales of the console like it happened with the WiiU or GC. That's what i meant, i find this strategy really unbalanced and more than ever now that they have decided to aim for the all in one hybrid console style like the Switch.

If it works it's really, i mean REALLY profitable for them, but if not......Nintendo will find themselves in a far worse situation that what they were during 2013-2015 era.

That's why i think Switch, despite having such a success this gen with milestone record sales for some of their franchises won't reach Wii lifetime software sales and that could put Nintendo in an impossible situation with the Switch succesor. Next gen consoles launching next year won't help receiving more 3rd party support either, so Nintendo will have the pressure to launch sequels to beloved games that had put the bar way too high. Is Nintendo capable of doing that?, of course, but this is the hardest way of achieving success.

As for the prediction, i side by Switch being more than 18M this year too, but a few weeks ago i was almost certain it would ship more than 20M this year, but i'm not as sure anymore. 19M still seems like the safest bet this year.