VideoGameAccountant said:
Shadow1980 said:
I never said it was the end all, be all. I've even made the point that it wasn't in the past. No two systems have identical sales curves, or even similar curves (in the geometric sense of "same shape, different size"). For example, I have noted on more than one occasion that professional analysts were wrong to compare early PS3 sales to GameCube sales and imply the former might only sell as well as the latter. But we do see plenty of obvious patterns in historical sales data regarding how various factors impact hardware sales, and that is important.
Also, you have still yet to actually provide evidence that AC has been the primary driver of Switch sales in the U.S. over past four NPD sales periods. And you have still yet to provide any evidence of some new precedent set by either the Switch or AC. Until I see your evidence, I'm not going to spend any more time on this subject. Otherwise we're just going to be arguing in circles and repeating ourselves.
Again, your assertion that NSMB was driving sales not only has zero evidence to support it, it's outright contradicted by the data. Even the most cursory glance at the data proves this. We can clearly see that it provided only a brief boost in Japan, with no additional improvements to a baseline that has. And in the U.S., DS sales in May 2006 saw absolutely no improvement over April. It wasn't until the DS Lite came out that we saw a spike in DS sales. The sales data is right there to see, and what it tells us is clear: NSMB did not produce any kind of long-term surge in DS sales in Japan, and provided no immediate boost to DS sales in the U.S.
A game being among the best-selling titles on a system, or even being the best-selling title on a system, doesn't make it a system-seller in its own right. Not every popular game causes an appreciable improvement to the amount of hardware being sold. If Japan is any indication, most games that do cause a bump in HW sales do so very briefly, and by an amount that wouldn't even show up in a situation where sales are tracked on a monthly basis. And simply asserting that a game caused huge improvements in HW sales doesn't make it so. You need real evidence.
I'm not going spend time having a back-and-forth over NSMB as a supposed system-seller because it is obviously contradicted by the data. My reply to you Saturday provided more than sufficient evidence to debunk your point. If you can provide another example, preferably one supported by actual data, I'd be willing to discuss that, however.
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The Animal Crossing point is very easy to prove. Nintendo's year-end is March 30th and most of the virus scare didn't happen until mid-way through the end of the month. Stimulus checks weren't going out until later (see this article from the end of March:https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/politics/stimulus-payments/index.html). So this period is a good measure of how well the Switch was doing before the COVID impact. From Nintendo's earnings release;
Looking at software, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield became big hits, posting sales of 17.37 million units, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, released in March, sold 11.77 million units, which is now the best start ever for a Nintendo Switch title
So in about 10 days, Animal Crossing became one of the best selling Switch games. Since then, Animal Crossing has sold 22 million while Pokemon has sold 18 million. If the pandemic was the only thing pushing sales, why didn't Pokemon get a similar bump? In fact, Pokemon has sold less than Animal Crossing despite being out 3 months prior. If it's the virus and not the software, we shouldn't be seeing one game sell gangbusters above the rest. This is the problem with your assessment is you ignore the obvious: that people need something to play if they are going to spend hundreds of dollars on plastic.
The NSMB point is also dumb. New Super Mario Bros sold 30 million units which is about one-fifth the entire install base. Are you going to say that weren't people who went and bought the DS or DS Lite just to play NSMB? Your comment doesn't even pass the smell test.
I'm sure you'll come back and say the data doesn't show it or something, in which case I'd say your looking at the data wrong (the obvious issue being you look at one point in time and not in totality. NSMB released early on. Obviously it was pushing units throughout its lifespan). I pthink you're not asking yourself why people buy games. As a result, you're missing the forest for the trees,
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