RolStoppable said:
Otter said:
This is the first I'm hearing someone say that the DS'&Wii life was cut short. The DS receieved Pokemon Black and white 2 in 2012 and it shifted almost zero consoles. We saw games that did great on the DS, struggle on the 3DS (Nintendogs + cats). Market shifts towards mobile phones and other trends I think are causes for the DS falling off a cliff sales wise and I really doubt more of the same from Nintendo would have changed that.
Saturation of hardware sales is really a different trajectory of software sales. We saw big late gen 3DS titles like Yokai Watch and Pokemon sell big but struggle to give 3DS hardware boosts and offset its decline.
With the Wii we saw a pretty consistent 5m fallout after 2009, that did not begin with the Wii U. Mario Galaxy 2 & Donkey Kong Country, Sonic Colours, XenoBlade, Metroid Other M, Red Steel 2, Golden Eye and more didn't stop Wii's decline. 2010 was a significantly better year than 2009, but 2009 had Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit and NSMB. Its not about the number of games released but about their ability to attract new audiences. People will argue Skyward Sword sold relatively poorly because it required a wii remote plus but Mario Galaxy 2 didn't and it still sold almost 50% less than its predecessor. Point being there's always been fatigue which settles in.
I think its impossible to make an argument here because there is no president of Nintendo systems selling a lot of hardware in late gen because of more pokemon or mario games. What we do see is that these ever green titles released in the first half of systems life are the system sellers and continue to sell the system throughout its life time. And this is exactly why Nintendo generations cannot blankly be compared with Playstation or Xbox.
The only thing that comes to mind is how great 2000 was for the N64 (Majoras mask, Banjo Tooie, Perfect Dark, paper Mario, Mario tennis etc.) but people will say the PS2 stole its momentum or whatever.
In the modern age, Nintendo can have this smooth transition. Waiting post 2023 before introducing new hardware seems bizzare. I don't see why a Switch 2 would mean an end of the Switch 1. We're not shifting from 2D/3D, we're not shifting from SD to HD, we're not building on entirely new hardware or achitecture. Instead of throwing out a completely unnecessary SKU, waiting for their audience to die 2 years later then hoping they come back next gen, Nintendo can be a bit forward thinking and give a meaningful invetsment for those who want new hardware. Something that can carry them (Nintendo) forward for the next 4+ years. All the meanwhile there is nothing lost, the handheld market you spoke off will continue on Switch 1 but also games that would never had been made for it can be made for Switch 2. In the end Switch 1 will still get its 6 year life span.
A good way to look at it was if Microsoft waited a year longer and investmented more in Xbox Series X, so that it was the rumoured Lockheart and would support the next 5 years of games and not a mid-gen update. But anyway I'm not seeing arguments for why they shouldn't release a Switch 2, just arguments of why they should continue to support current Switch (which they can obviously keep doing). Enough speculation from me though, I see them being successful regardless of which route they take I just think people are underestimating striking whilst the iron is hot (they've literally never done this) and there are many unique opportunities that a early release (by 2022) will allow them imo.
|
What really made DS sales decline sharply was Nintendo's decision to cut the 3DS's price by 10k yen/$80/€80, which put it in the same price range as the DSi and DSi XL SKUs. When consumers have the choice to pay the same price for a last gen system or a backwards compatible current gen system that will play the games of two consoles' libraries, it becomes an obvious choice to pick the newer console at no extra cost. Only the DS Lite was safe from the 3DS's price cut.
For the Wii, 2009 was Nintendo's final wave of software for people who didn't consider the N64 and GC up to snuff. 2009's first half saw a significant decline in hardware sales because Nintendo had released only two minor titles in six months; the second half of 2009 had a huge rebound on the back of the big games you mentioned and pushed the Wii above 20m for the year. From 2010 onwards Nintendo had only sporadic releases of games for fans of classic Nintendo, so a terminal decline set in. It's still kind of a miracle that the Wii could sell more than 10m in 2011 because no other console with a broken software pipeline had even sold half of that in the past. 2011 was the 3DS's launch year and Nintendo's focus was pretty much entirely on preventing the 3DS from becoming a failure, so both the Wii and DS had to give.
For all the things that were bad about the 3DS and Wii U, Nintendo got at least one thing right with both of them. The length of their respective lifecycles was appropriate relative to their lifetime sales and the transition phase to Switch was smooth.
Switch 2 in 2022 would be incredibly damaging to Nintendo, because on one hand their customers would not be ready to move on at this point (the time to move on is when it's expected that yearly hardware sales drop to below 10m; it's 2020 and Switch has yet to peak), and on the other hand technology won't have advanced enough to see any benefits from an early launch of a successor. Nintendo won't be able to come reasonably close to the PS5 and XSX in 2022 while maintaining acceptable battery life.
|
