| RolStoppable said: "Third pillar" was said regarding the DS as a way to back out of it in case it didn't sell well; that way Nintendo could have simply continued with the Game Boy line while the DS would have been remembered as a failed experiment that was done in addition to the usual home and handheld consoles. NX was always meant to be a successor to the Wii U and 3DS, but Nintendo's statements that the actual name of NX will neither include "Wii" or "DS" were something that some people took and ran with to mean that Nintendo was planning to support three different platforms side by side; however, that was contradicted by Nintendo's statements that their software output will be consolidated on a single platform in the future. I don't recall anything said about the 3DS. So much for the history lesson, now for the meat. It's hardly relevant what Nintendo said about the lifespan of Switch. What's clear is that Nintendo won't face another transitional period where up to four consoles see game development concurrently, so Switch will continue to receive multiple big Nintendo IPs after year 4 which is a key difference to all of the Nintendo consoles you've had on your list today. Fall 2021 is when I expect a mid-gen refresh to happen for Switch. Not something along the lines of a Pro model, but something similar to what the New 3DS was to the 3DS. Price cuts and revisions continue to be glanced over in Switch sales predictions, just like the presence or absence of similarities between Switch and previous Nintendo consoles. Since it's already clear that Switch will be backloaded in terms of price cuts and revisions, the only remaining Nintendo consoles on your list that are useful for comparison are the DS and 3DS. If you narrow it down further by looking at overall software support, the DS is much closer to Switch than the 3DS is. If you expect Switch to sell 70m by the end of 2020, 120m is a conservative estimate for lifetime sales based on your table. Unsurprisingly, I expect more than 120m lifetime, because unlike the DS, Switch won't be limited to Pokémon in regards to big Nintendo sellers after year 4. |
I expect further revisions to the Switch, though not necessarily anything that will shift significant amounts of systems. But you're right everything I say is my tentative opinion, and depending on revisions, cuts and other business decisions a substantial drop in 2021 can be avoided. If the Switch does get a revision that's highly desirable to existing users, or a mid-gen refresh, it could certainly do a lot more than I expect.
Another thing that works against my own reasoning is game releases, with Switch being the only system Nintendo is supporting until it's successor is released this could greatly help it's performance in it's later years.
110m is still my guess but there's many things that could happen to shatter that and there's definitely ways that the 2021 drop can be avoided. Only time will tell.
