What does Nintendo need to do to reach 150M Switches sold?

[Jumpin]

IcaroRibeiro said:

Jumpin said:

Nintendo just needs to keep building on their platform, rather than clearing it out and rebuilding every generation. Switch 2 should be a Switch 2 should bring Switch 1 gamers and their libraries into the next generation, rather than starting the next generation without them.

I think they won't do this because they want to sell remastered versions of Switch games on Switch successor 

Or the will decided to not release, let's say, Breath of The Wild remaster on Switch 2, to release it along with BOTW 2 as collection on Switch 3 instead. My point is just they are a company that likes to make their games scarce, so people will be more likely to buy it when they re-released that game 10 years in future 

Backwards compatibility depreciate their games  values or at least decreases the pool of potential buyers. As a consumer it sucks, but that's not much we can do about

About the drop on support in their consoles, I think it's just a matter of human resources. They need to keep a big influx of games to convince people to buy the new hardware. They are not able to keep the support to both hardwares. The point of buying a Nintendo hardware is 70% their exclusives that happens to be mainly first party, if Switch 2 shares the same library of Switch 1 then people will have no reason to buy Switch 2 until Switch 2 gets it's own exclusives in their second or third year of existence 

If people delays too much buying their new hardware it can make third party delay their support too, either for ports or for exclusives. I can see Switch 2 suffering from PS3 fate, with a slow start and with good sales by the end of its life, but far behind people's expectations 

I'm sure Nintendo will drop completely their own support for Switch 1 by at least a year before Switch 2 release. And I don't think it will hurt Switch sales as much as it did with Wii or DS, because Switch 1 already has a plethora of evergreen titles to hard-carry software and hardware sales, plus seems like 3rd party are really starting to release their own exclusives, specially japanese third parties

I see Switch 1 having a much better 3rd party support late-life than the Wii. First because the user base will very likely end being 40% higher and they aren't buying the switch for an specific game mechanic that 3rd parties aren't interested to develop for

They can still release remastered versions of games on a platform where the existing older version exists, no one’s stopping them, Steam does this all the time.

Why do you think values of games will drop? Why do you think potential buyers will decrease?

Nintendo rarely drops the price of their games. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to. Additionally, Switch already has massive price drop sales all the time. Dual support isn’t going to make this any worse.

And potential buyers of software won’t decrease, they’ll increase. It’s not like people will stop buying new games because they already have old ones, this hasn’t happened on any platform, ever.
Continued support of Switch 1 full steam ahead means the ecosystem is expanding. This is why game sales went up when new Android and iOS devices came out. For a Nintendo example: when improved models of GBA and 3DS came out - which, while not new generations, still serve a similar purpose by improving the capabilities of the original hardware: just through other means that don’t include a massive power boost. What we have observed, though, is drastic decrease in software sales as support drops off toward the end of a generation for exclusive support to a new generation with a smaller user base. That’s hurt Nintendo every generation, some much more than others. The slash an burn then replant strategy is often disastrous - as was the case with N64, Wii U, and GameCube.

The Human Resources stuff is only a problem with the way things are currently done. It splits the markets, usually in favour of the new generation while the prior generation goes underserved, and game sales underperform. That’s the point of Switch 2 expanding on Switch 1, to have a single game support two tiers rather than splitting the market, and selling to only part of the potential audience.

Lastly, exclusives aren’t the only reason people buy new hardware: Nintendo has proven this multiple times with GBA SP and DS Lite outselling the older models - again, they serve the same purpose as a new generation in those cases because of the substantial improvements over the previous hardware. People will buy Switch 2 because it’s new. People buy new PCs and phones all the time for this exact reason. New hardware that plays games better is a compelling reason to upgrade to the next generation, or entice new customers to buy into the ecosystem.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 21 December 2020