I mean it did happen before to the Wii which had a spectacular collapse in the back half of its product cycle, but I don't think the Switch will be as prone to that.
Its fundamentals as a product line are much more sound and less driven by fad crazes. Like the Switch is really not relying on things like Wii Sports or Wii Fit to drive market adoption, it was doing just as well without things like Ring Fit and Labo was more or less a dud. If you remove Wii Sports and Wii Fit from the Wii it would massively damage that platform, but if you removed Ring Fit and Brain Training from Switch nothing would change.
And unlike Wii, the portable console concept is much harder for Sony/MS to copy like they did with Kinect and PS Move (thus rendering the Wii not so special all of the sudden) ... they would have to commit to a portable platform while also supporting a home console and we've seen that's very hard for Sony to manage (PSVita).
So likely there isn't going to be a portable console alternative available for some time if at all. Game streaming to portable devices may be a long term area of concern, but for now, most people don't have unlimited data plans for their home internet, let alone wireless internet 5G that would allow for widespread portable game streaming.
Decline in years 4/5/6 is normal for just about any hardware platform, there are some systems like the XBox 360 that buck that trend but not many.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 18 April 2020
