| zorg1000 said: I kind of agree with @Otter here, from what i understand he's not saying sales are going to fall off a cliff, he's arguing against the idea that Switch will sell 20+ million for the each of the next few years and that annual sales will begin to taper down from this point. Whether or not that actually happens doesn't stop it from being a very realistic prediction. |
Well, it does seem kind of silly to think the Switch will have 3 straight years of selling 20M+. The only console to do that was the DS, which the Switch is definitely not following its sales pattern. I mean, there is no denying that the Switch has performed better this year than many, including myself, believed it would. AC was a bigger HW pusher than we thought. Of course, the Corona lockdown also had a lot to do with it. It has pushed a lot of HW for all 3 systems.
We are also at the point where every Nintendo franchise has had a game come out, even the ones that people questioned could push HW. I guess the only one left is Metroid. However, that franchise has never been a big seller. It took that series 12 games over 2 1/2 decades to hit 17M+ units sold in 2012. It's true the Zelda series was also questioned early in the Switch's life. However that had, without question, a higher sales potential, hitting 19M+ with just 4 games in about 7 years in 1993. Of course, you also have the fact that the Prime series has never done well in Japan. It could surprise us and sell better than other entries in the series, but that would probably only mean it would have to sell 2M-3M to hit that bar.
Once the new consoles launch, the Switch will also lose the luster of being the new console on the block. Like you said, there's no reason to expect a cliff like what happened to the Wii, but tapering down, starting later this year or next year is just natural.
