RolStoppable said:
Looks like you are going with shipment figures for your argument, but one important thing to note here is that the Wii went into the fiscal year ending March 2009 with very low inventory and ended the fiscal year ending March 2009 with very high inventory. This inflated shipments for the fiscal year ending March 2009 and is the reason why you even see a 5m decline for the fiscal year ending March 2010. Regardless, the fiscal year ending March 2010 saw shipments of 20.54m, so when you refer to such a figure as "wrecked", then I have to ask you if you are trolling or genuine. The biggest source of Nintendo's profits are sales of first party software, so logically the most effective way to keep profits high is by releasing games, not introducing new hardware (refering to next gen, not revisions). Launching new hardware is a hard task where a lot of factors have to strike a healthy balance, including the release schedule of first party games. Right now all of Nintendo's top development teams are working on Switch software to be released in late 2020 or throughout 2021, so a holiday 2022 launch for Switch 2 is absolutely not feasible if the intent is to please Nintendo's core audience (which is the basis of the argument you are making). There's no chance to have a sufficient amount of system sellers ready by then. Keep in mind that neither Switch hardware nor software have peaked yet, but you are talking about a successor that is supposed to launch in two years. Five years and seven months is a ridiculous proposition given the circumstances here. You are asking for a shorter lifecycle than the Wii despite Switch being in a much better position. |
So are you aware of what the actual sales trajectory was between 2008/9/10? My opinions are only based on the evidence I've found. The point is not that 2010 sales were "wrecked" but that the level of decline, inspite of a strong software line up doesn't paint a picture that Wii's later years could have been much better then what they actually were. Throwing in an extra title before Mario Galaxy 2 in 2010 wouldn't suddenly make a 5m difference in my opinion. So my question is what do you see as the reason for the consistent 5m declines (or what is the actual sales data)
FY09 25m
FY10 20m
FY11 15m
FY12 9.8m
FY13 3.8m (this is the only year with a sudden sharpness, otherwise you see a repeated pattern and I don't buy an argument that 2010 was a bad year of releases)
And the later 2 paragraphs all center around whether Nintendo can release a game on 2 platforms. My point is that they can, a unified but scalable development environment is what Nintendo is currently doing and what they should continue doing with a Switch 2. The Switch's success should be partially be credited to the existence of the Wii U afterall, that soft transition (porting games over instead building them from scratch) is what I'm expecting, not a hard reset. I do not see a Switch 2 causing a significant disruption to games arriving on Switch. We're talking about titles early in development now, arriving in over 2 years time with less compromises. I don't see the threat to 1st party Nintendo games at all, I think people are actually more likely to buy said games if they are on a newly purchased platform. And I've mentioned why I think a new soft transitional platform 5 years in makes more sense then a mere SKU upgrade where said person is out of the echosystem 3 years later like the DSi XL for example.
" You are asking for a shorter lifecycle than the Wii despite Switch being in a much better position." Considering no one is talking about the ending the Switch's life cycle, this point seems to be intentionally ignoring the conversation at hand. If you think it would end the Switch's life cycle can you explain why? I mean we would essentially be looking at 2 systems for a signifcant price difference between them, both having most major releases from Nintendo made for them.
Also I think we're mindlessly obsessing over these arbitrary comparison of years. In the proposed reality where a Switch 2 releases in 2022, I see the 2023 software and hardware sales being way higher than the alternate 2023 where Switch is Nintendo's only platform. So although I can understand why people think a traditional wait is more realistic, I'm certainly not seeing the ridiculousness of Nintendo wanting to have more consistent highs as opposed to the typical peaks and declines which in the past have been centered around limits of technology and resources.
