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javi741 on 29 August 2020
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Shadow1980 said:
curl-6 said:

We can't attribute Switch's sales solely to COVID-19 though, and ignore the colossal impact of Animal Crossing, which has basically become a cultural phenomenon and brought in huge swathes of new consumers to the platform.

As I and others said last year, it was and is a fundamental mistake to base Switch forecasts on the performance of past Nintendo systems as it is totally different from any of them.

I've been saying this for years as forecasts based on past systems have consistently underestimated the Switch.

Again:

Obviously, AC had a big impact in March. While there was probably somewhat of a pre-stimulus early-quarantine "better get it while the getting is good" rush (hence the uptick in PS4 & XBO sales in March after two months of big drops), the bulk of March's increases were clearly because of AC. April, however, showed a much, much smaller disparity in YoY changes. While AC likely had a residual effect in April (something at least a few major system-sellers have done in their second month), if the PS4 & XBO are any indication the bulk of the YoY increase in Switch sales in April was due to people getting their stimulus checks. While the YoY increases for the Switch tapered off more slowly than those of the PS4 & XBO, that could just as easily be chalked up to it being a younger, more popular, and thus better-stocked system. Once again, no game has ever had the kind of impact on hardware sales like what some are attributing to AC. Attributing something so unprecedented to a game while we are at the same time living in a time where we're dealing with something else unprecedented impacting the whole market is to me something that requires some damn good evidence. I've yet to see any good evidence that proves that the post-March boosts are primarily because of AC even though the PS4 & XBO had boosts that were clearly COVID-induced bumps. The Switch doesn't exist in a vacuum, and, especially given the nature of this year, has to be assessed in the broader context of the whole hardware market.

How about NSMB for the DS, once that game launched DS sales exploded and never looked back.

Also, like Curl-6 said, you need to stop using historical patterns in consoles to determine the future of the Switch since the Switch is pretty much throwing every past historical pattern out the window at this point. The Switch will be one of Nintendo's greatest selling consoles ever, and we've never seen a Nintendo system in the past having software/hardware attach rates this high at this point in its life. Meaning that more than ever people are buying the Switch right now solely for the games, it wasn't like the Wii where the sales were full of soccer moms who just wanted to try out Wii Sports, or even the DS where the install base wasn't as dedicated towards Nintendo games as they are now. 

Worldwide this year even without Covid the Switch would've peaked. You're severely underestimating the affect AC is having on the Switch. AC may potentially be the greatest selling exclusive game of all time and the fact that it sold nearly 11 Million in 1 quarter and 22 million in a matter of 3 months is unprecedented for an exclusive game AND IT WASN"T EVEN RELEASED in the Holiday season like most major AAA exclusive games. The game is a global phenomenon unlike anything we've seen before, even Nintendo went out of their way in their financial report to say that these Switch sales have been largely attributed to AC.

Also, how about when Pokemon Red and Blue released for the OG Gameboy in 1998. The Gameboy sales exploded for years on end despite being a nearly 10 year old system after that games release.