Nintendo's success with the Switch both a blessing and a curse?

[scottslater]

goopy20 said:

scottslater said:

I wouldn't worry about the Switch at all in 2020.  I believe very much that it will be the #1 selling system again for the next year.  Next gen consoles typically take a year or two to start selling at a rapid pace.  There is also budget to take into consideration.  These new consoles are likely to cost $400-$500 and for that kind of money you can buy a PS4/Xbox 1/Switch with several games and many will still do that for a couple years.

Nintendo has never had to rely on 3rd party support to sell their systems.  Sony/Microsoft heavy reliance on 3rd party games is a detriment IMO as it does not create brand loyalty.  You can see that with the last few generations (Xbox 360 being "more popular" than the PS3, the PS4 being "more popular" than the Xbox 1) and Nintendo has never really suffered that (the Wii U was just a major misstep as a whole and had nothing to do with 3rd party support).

Not sure if that's true. The ps4 sold 14,6m in 2014 and it makes sense that people are now waiting for the ps5/Scarlett instead of buying a ps4/Xbox. Obviously Nintendo has its exclusives that are its major draw but we've also seen that Mario and Zelda alone aren't enough to guarantee success next gen, if you look at what happened with the Gamecube and Wii-U. Besides, Sony has arguably the better and more varied exclusives.

To me the success with the Switch lies in the fact that it's a handheld with pretty impressive graphics at this moment. However, when the next gen hits, Switch graphics will look seriously more dated and support from 3rd party developers will be non-existent. Sure, you can say 3rd party games don't tend to sell on Nintendo consoles but that doesn't mean they don't need it at all. 

PS4 sold 20 million units in 2016, so it took a couple years to reach it's peak selling power.  I can't find the data at this moment but if memory serves correctly the PS3/Xbox 360 still sold extremely well during the PS4/Xbox One early launch years (like 15+ million units per year).  Historically speaking next generation consoles take a couple years before peak sales are attained. The GameCube and Xbox were dominated by PS2 in their respective generation.  The Wii U was a marketing disaster and was a failure before it even launched.  There is still people to this day that don't realize it's a different system from the Wii.  And Nintendo has way better and varied exclusives.  And just to be clear, 3rd party developers needed the Wii, not the other way around.

The success with the Switch has nothing to do with graphics.  It already looks extremely dated compared to One X/PS4 Pro and yet still crushes sales.  It's games are crushing other games at the moment.  The Switch has shown that having the most powerful graphics doesn't matter to the majority of buyers, if it was it would have failed just as bad as the Wii U.  People want good and fun games, there is only so many times you can play CoD clones and adventure games like God of War/Fable before it becomes super repetitive and "boring".