Yep, I agree with you in many aspects, New Horizon & Ring Fit will also continue selling to new people next year as we have seen. The main difference is that starting this fall we are beginning to see 3rd Party games also perform strongly. eBaseball is a sign of things to come. We are looking at 3rd Parties more than doubling their total in the fall due to a strong holiday lineup. We still don't know if Bravely Default 2 will make it, but even the remaining games should boost 3rd party sales considerably.
Top Selling 3rd Party Games 2020:
- Minecraft (Microsoft) - 359.349
- eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball 2020 (Konami) - 224.358
- Fishing Spirits (Bandai Namco) - 153.603
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 (Bandai Namco) - 117.954
- Trials of Mana (Square Enix) - 100.451
- Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun! (Bandai Namco) - 91.760
- Dragon Quest XI S (Square Enix) - 82.137
- Hatsune Miku: Project Diva MegaMix (Sega) - 78.558
- Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers (Atlus) - 65.653
- Fitness Boxing (Imagineer) - 62.949
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Square Enix) - 56.187
TOTAL: 1.336.772
- Bandai - 3
- Square - 2
- Microsoft, Konami, Sega, Atlus, Imagineer - 1
BIG 3rd PARTY GAMES FALL 2020:
Taiko (Bandai Namco), Momotaro (Konami), Atelier 2 (Koei Tecmo), Age of Calamity (Koei Tecmo), SMT III (Atlus), Fitness Boxing 2 (Imagineer)
I'm expecting around 1.5M to 2M Software sales from 3rd Parties on Famitsu in the coming in the next three months. There is a lot of games that should be in the 50-100K range as well.
BIG 3rd PARTY GMAES UNCONFIRMED DATE OR 2021:
Bravely Default 2 (Square Enix), Monster Hunter Rise (Capcom), Monster Hunter Stories 2 (Capcom), Rune Factory 5 (Marvelous), SMT V (Altus)
Add this stronger support to an already dominant position and next year's Nintendo & Pokemon Co line-up, a Switch Pro, potential price drop for Lite/OG Switch, finally, Nintendo manufacturing >30 million units per year and enough stock of Ring Fit to meet global demand, well 25% of 30 million is 7.5 million, not sure what 2020 will end up achieving but I'm guessing it would be >7 million. Next year is definitely better positioned for Nintendo to hit peak sales in Japan.
The only thing guaranteed is whoever is investing into building a Switch audience will see substantial growth in the coming years. This year Koei and Konami are set to make the biggest gains, and both could continue to see growth through since PES or Dynasty Warriors are IPs that could debut a mainline entry on the Switch next year. Meanwhile, Capcom will become the best-selling 3rd Party Publisher, next year entirely due to Monster Hunter but this was always an expected outcome once the announcement was made. Bandai will be flat, since they do seem to continue shooting themselves in the foot with late ports and bad decisions in terms of platform strategy, wonder if we will see even more multiplats next year since they are the most prolific 3rd Party pub across PS4/Switch in the last few years. Despite all of this Taiko and Fishing Spirits will end up their best selling games in Japan for the last decade. Square I guess is in the worst position until they are ready with DQXII, and they are releasing all their AA games on the Switch. But with a decline for FFXVI, I do expect the next Kingdom Hearts to target Switch. Atlus obviously is SMT V next year, while Sega still isn't exactly providing substantial support.
