What do you want in a Switch 2?

[Soundwave]

RolStoppable said:

Soundwave said:

When I say 2022 I'm referring the the fiscal year which would end March 2023. And that's entirely possible, the DS went from like 31 million peak to 17 million in just 2 years. Nintendo systems can drop hard from their peak in 2-3 years.

3DS peaked at 13.95 and two fiscal years later was at 8.73 million. Wii peaked at 25 million and was down to 15 million two fiscal years later.

Three years removed from the peak is uglier.

Nintendo systems have much more volatile year to year swings like that ... in the past they were more easily able to make up for this because often the hardware cycle would work out just so such that they would have a new handheld or a new console coming to make up for declines in other areas. So you could sell investors on things like don't worry about Wii sales declining because 3DS is just around the corner (of course they didn't execute that well, but in advance that's something a share holder can look at and say "yeah I'm not selling my shares, this 3DS is probably going to cause a boom in business"). 

The reason for such drops was that Nintendo moved their top development teams to a new console along with transitional periods where first party game development was spread across four consoles at once. The 3DS's drop was due to Nintendo shifting sales to the front with an early price cut and revisions.

None of the above situations are applicable to Switch. Nintendo's profitability is also not as dependent on yearly hardware sales as it was in the past. They are working on building up two revenue streams that are largely independent of hardware performance. Their endeavors on smart devices are self-explanatory while subscriptions for Nintendo Switch Online have something to do with Switch itself, but will be ongoing even when yearly hardware sales decline. That's why your fearmongering about Nintendo's profitability makes little to no sense.

You don't know that for sure. 

The fact is Nintendo has basically 8 really big selling IP ... Pokemon, 3D Mario, 2D Mario, Zelda, Smash, Splatoon, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart. Once you start to saturate these IP with multiple instalments on a hardware platform you start to run out of appeal, I think that plays as large of a factor. 

Nintendo's success in the smartphone realm has been up and down too, they are making decent money from it but I don't think Animal Crossing has been the huge hit on the phone side they were hoping for. After a hot start, Mario Kart has fallen down the top grossers chart too. Smartphone market is insanely overcrowded and unpredictable. Pokemon Go is still by far the top grossing Nintendo related app and they only see a limited cut from that. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 10 January 2020