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NightlyPoe said:
RolStoppable said:

7.5 years, so a holiday 2024 launch for its successor. Like I said, successful Nintendo consoles have had six years in the past (except the GBA), so a new console before 2023 isn't realistic. The other thing is that console manufacturers typically work towards a holiday launch in order to get off to a good start, so the earliest sensible date for the Switch successor would be holidays 2023. But since Switch still has so many price and revision options left after three years, I am expecting Nintendo to be able add another year without running into the problem of too low sales.

If Switch averages 17.5m per year from 2020 to 2023 - not too lofty of an expectation because 2020 and 2021 are bound to perform above this average - then it will be at ~120m by the end of 2023. Add another 12-15m in 2024 and post-successor sales of above 10m (if the 3DS could pull off such an 8-digit-figure, then Switch can certainly do the same) and you land in the range of 140-150m lifetime. It's not necessary to have crazy high expectations to approach 150m lifetime, all it takes is an outlook for a more realistic sales curve rather than Michael Pachter logic ("Switch won't sell 100m lifetime because that would mean 20m per year.") which set a hard time limit of five years for Switch's lifecycle.

7.5 years as Nintendo's main console and 2.5 years of post-successor legs for a total lifecycle of 10 years are sufficient to reach 150m lifetime. Switch's performance in 2020 and 2021 will determine how hard it's going to be to get to that number and that will depend first and foremost on Nintendo's software output over the course of the next 20 months. If they put out software that expands the current userbase with titles like Super Mario Bros. 5 and Switch Sports (motion control sports game akin to Wii Sports Resort) and hit hardware sales of 45m combined in these two years, then the aforementioned average over four years will be a lot easier to hit than if Nintendo wrecks itself with software output akin to the GameCube - examples of this would be doing a U-turn on the direction of Zelda with Breath of the Wild 2 or positioning Pikmin 4 as a big title.

Another thing that will allow Switch to have high sustained sales are the varying sales dynamics in different regions of the world. Europe is a fragmented market, each country being price-sensitive to a different degree. So far Switch has pulled off great numbers in France and decent numbers in a few other countries, but for the most part there are a lot of growth opportunities left, just like in rest of the world countries. So while Switch will be approaching its saturation point quicker in countries like Japan, the USA and France, other countries will begin to pick up the slack over time as the prices for the hardware SKUs become more affordable.

Not bad (I think we'd disagree moderately on 2021, but we'll set that aside), but I'd adjust a couple of things.  I think your 2024 estimates are pretty high.  12-15 million seems like a more realistic estimate for 2023 in this scenario.  For 2024, you'd be estimating that for a 7th year of a console that's also a transition year where the Christmas boost would be highly muted by the successor's launch.  In that environment, you've got the Switch performing about even with the 2017 launch year and 70-90% of 2018 levels.

Additionally, I think the 10 million you budget into the post-successor launch should overlap with the 2024 holiday period in that scenario.  2025 probably wouldn't be much more than 5 million altogether since the holiday would be a full year into the successor's reign and 2026 would just be the death rattle.

Adjusting for those two, I think we're back down into the 130 million+ territory.

or the switch could be like the NES and just not die as in many places were still selling the consoles for almost 30 years the reason why they stopped is Nintendo ran out of parts. now yeah that a huge outlier but it is possible that the switch could live long since it is a special case so who knows.