| The_Liquid_Laser said: Well, since you seem to be an expert on how console sales work, then what is your explanation? Why do Nintendo consoles seem to sell less on the tail end compared to Sony consoles? Why is it that the NES, SNES, and Gameboy all had exceptionally strong sales on the tail end? What changed? What are the underlying factors? |
My guess as to why those consoles in particular had pretty decent sales in their later years is because they were still receiving games even when the new consoles were out. On the NES at least Kirby's Adventure, Yoshi's Cookie, Contra Force, Mega Man 5, and Little Samson all came out in 1992, two years after the SNES came out. I think the SNES had a new revision released in 1997 which of course probably drove sales, and Gameboy likely had strong sales just simply because of Pokemon alone.
These days Ninty doesn't really support consoles as soon as the new one comes out, except in certain cases. N64, Wii, Wii U and GameCube all pretty much got drop like a dirty shirt in terms of support once the new console came out. The exceptions to this pattern would be 3DS and GBA since their successors, DS and Switch, weren't guaranteed successes because they were a new concept so Nintendo had to hedge their bets and still partially support the old consoles in those cases because they knew they were successful.
So I guess what's changed is the fact they Nintendo doesn't really support their consoles anymore once the successor has come out and I would imagine the same will happen to Switch unless like I said before the concept for the successor is completely different. If the console after Switch is just a Switch 2 then I would say Switch stops getting support and sales drop off a cliff hard once it it is released--if it's something different Switch may still get a couple more years of support until interest in it completely dies off, which is exactly what happened to the 3DS.
