| curl-6 said: Between this and their past insistence that they want a longer lifespan for the Switch, it seems safe to say Nintendo won't be replacing it any time soon and those hoping for a successor next year are out of luck. As I've said, there's simply no good reason to hurry on from one of the fastest selling systems ever while there's still so much potential life left in it. Let's just hope they don't do a Wii and let its last few years turn into drought city; their future lineup is looking extremely barren atm. And no, covid-19 isn't an excuse, they have games that have been in the works for years now while the pandemic's been going less than 2 months. |
Well there is if you have a plan and reasoning behind it (of which is there are plenty)
I mean the PS One relaunch in 2000 ($99) was competing 1:1 sales wise with PS2 ($299) for about a year but its natural to assume they targeted very different audiences. Sony could have kept pushing PS1 til 2002, but giving the PS2 a year head start over its competitors and entering at the beginning of the DVD era secured them a bigger future then the PS1 was ever going to have. It also meant their audiences didn't go on to invest in gamecube/xbox/Dreamcast.
If Ninetndo's expectation is that a systems lifespan ends at the release of a new console, then its looking like a Switch 2 in late 2023 is the earliest they'll do but that doesn't have to be the case at all. (and Nintendo have always combined genius with being quite slow)
PS1 sold 30m after the PS2's launch and that was without any major cross generation support from developers (which Nintendo could easily do and I actually think cross gen of a title like BOTW2 will increase its software sales significantly without incurring much cost). Subsequently sony had FY02 where they shipped 30m units of combined PS2/PS1 hardware. There's every chance that Switch + any of its revisions never ship more than 20m in any fiscal year again (this fy year steady/ next year decline).
There are windows of opportunity that come and go, or become harder to access over time. This is the only reason why anyone would say a Switch 2 should come sooner than later. Nintendo doesn't operate in Vacuum, nor do they have to settle for the profits they're currently seeing. They could easily absorb notable hardware, Software, services/subscriptions sales from playstation 5 and Series X with a new platform, all whilst tackling their blue ocean market with the current Switch. Wait too long and people will be forced to opt into competitor platforms and their ecoystsems (majority Switch owners have multiple consoles). Once that happens they will never invest in a Switch 2 the same, the ceiling will be lowered (even if its still massively high)
The technology will be here in 2 years if Nintendo wanted to try this more ambitious route, I don't actually expect they will do anything of the sort lol
