DélioPT said:
Nintendo always had evergreens. The question is not how many games Nintendo can produce or if they are great games. I didn't put in question quality, but "the quantity of 1st party system sellers". Offering something different from PS5 or Series X might be a factor, but it may not be at the same time. Simplifying, a secondary console might not be a problem now but that is because those Sony and MS consumers have no other real option and if they want something more, for a 300$ and less, Switch is a good investment. Switch didn't have an official price cut, but they had a Lite at 100$/€ less. |
Wii's marketing strategy fade away pretty quickly and it wasn't a very loved console. There were also pretty much no games in the last years.
Switch on the other hand, has a totally different demographic. Top sellers aren't only family titles but things like Botw are going to sell 20+ millions.
Sure, 70% of the install base own another console. But what tells you they might just stick with the Switch if Nintendo is aggressive enought with a new model and big titles ? What tells you the new consoles won't be under 450/500$ and people right now don't really have the money for that ? What even tells you the lineup for these new consoles won't get delayed and the first year won't be lackluster ? Switch was out in PS4's peak but PS4 owners were still buying a Switch. Not everyone buys a console at the same time. And the numbers for software the Switch is producing shows that people really love the console and want to invest in it. It is selling faster than the PS4 after all....
Not saying the next gen won't affect it at all, but i'm really not expecting a huge it. Demand for the Switch is at it's peak right now and many gamers are well aware the PS5 is a thing and even more the Series X that literally got shown.
And for the lite, we saw before the pandemic that people still higly prefer the classic Switch they just wanted one that much they had to go with a lite cause the other one was out of stock. Nothing says these won't go and buy a classic model later on too.
By the way, there was a pretty significant boost last year for the "new" switch classic with more battery life while it literally wasn't even advertised and only had 1h more battery. Really shows there is multiple ways for Nintendo to push the console like a pro model of sort. A price cut would be huge and never a system didn't get one before it's fourth year, it's just insane.
There is a report Nintendo expected it to sell 110 millions, so i'm sure it means they plan a long lifecycle for it (hints of why it doesn't have any cuts) and probably other sku on the way. At the end of the year it should hit pass the 70 millions mark if Nintendo does the bare minimum but i'm sure they will get pretty aggressive now. We're entering the second part of it's life and it should be about system diversity and aggressive pricing.