Global Hardware 18 January 2020

[The_Liquid_Laser]

curl-6 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

If a system gets enough mid-tier games, then they become system sellers themselves.  The PS1 only had one "big" franchise, Final Fantasy, and it didn't sell anything like the big franchises of today.  Instead the PS1 mostly sold on the strength of having a lot of great mid-tier games.  It became the top selling system of all time beating the previous record holder by about 40 million hardware units.  That is what having a lot of quality mid-tier games can do.

PS1 did not have only one big franchise. And Switch's third party support isn't anywhere near strong enough to negate the need for big first party exclusives.

Forgot about Gran Turismo.  Everything else sold under 10m, which would not be considered "big" by today's standards.  However PS1 hardware numbers are considered big by today's standards.  PS1 didn't sell on the power of a few huge hits.  It sold by having a huge library of games.  Don't count out the power of those mid-tier games.

I'm not saying that Switch doesn't need first party games.  It does, and it will have them.  I'm just saying don't discount the power of those mid-tier third party games.  They sell systems all on their own if there are enough of them.  When a big game releases there is a huge, immediate sales spike, but if you step back and look at the big picture, you'll see having a huge library of mid-tier games is important to selling a system.  People don't want to just play a few big titles a year with nothing in between.  Those mid-tier games can be system sellers too if there are enough of them.