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

[scottslater]

Alistair said:

SammyGiireal said:

Well they consolidated both their home and portable efforts into one system. Which is an impressive portable and a less impressive console Because Nintendo really intended for it to continue their portable Legacy. The Switch Lite drives that point home. Nintendo really left the strict home console bussiness after the Wii U flop.

Absolutely I agree. The Switch is not a home console, it is a mobile system with a dock. Nintendo did drop out, sadly, and so high sales of the Switch need to be considered vs. the DS and 3DS etc., Nintendo is actually selling less hardware. Here's hoping the Switch success gives Nintendo some confidence to re-enter the home console market. I think they could do a very good job with the new style of hardware that the Switch pioneered.

For example: nVidia and ARM, no optical drive, no hard drive, just 1 or 2 cartridge slots. They could easily release a 7nm GTX 1660 Super based system in 2020 for $250 and I think it would sell really well just like the Wii did (would be faster than the Xbox One X).

What? Hardware sales have shot up since the release of the Switch...

2011 33,532,422
2012 24,454,037
2013 20,249,117
2014 13,898,841
2015 10,860,578
2016 8,749,523
2017 19,867,132
2018 19,980,747

2011 was a perfect storm of 3DS, DS, and Wii.

If you just look at 3DS+Wii (U) numbers the Switch is at about both of those combined:

2011 24,772,747
2012 19,194,206
2013 17,483,183
2014 13,382,872

Switch Sales first 2 years:

2017 13,116,268 (with 3DS still selling 6,625,304)
2018 16,482,594 (with 3DS still selling 3,498153)

And there is still many 3DS users that haven't adopted the Switch yet as their handheld. Technically speaking, Nintendo "won" 2018 by 1,478,127 and Sony outsold them by 922,965 units in 2017 (if only the Wii U wasn't such a disaster...)

Last edited by scottslater - on 12 December 2019