Global Hardware Jan 31-Feb 6 - PS5 and Xbox Series X|S Sales Increase

[Jumpin]

xMetroid said:

Jumpin said:

Switch still dipping down, and it might go lower than it otherwise would have in the weeks to come, as Nintendo stumbled with their latest Direct by taking focus off of the Winter quarter.  Capping it off with a hand tip for an unremarkable game 1-2 years away was like shooting themselves in the foot. The thing is, the next couple of months are strong, Nintendo just really sold it poorly by pushing this Direct out. Probably the first thing they’ve done I really disagree with this generation.

IMO, their newsletters are still fairly strong, as are their eShop and news channel promos. But I feel this Direct just ate all the focus.

Who knows, maybe it won’t have a severe impact?

They sold 28 millions consoles last year without a direct, i don't feel like a average direct will make the sales dip. Imo they will have a big direct with Botw, revision and metroid sometimes this year. There is literally no competition right now anyway. No big games releasing only on PS5/XS until like June and they are also nowhere to be found.

What you mean is they didn't have a big unfocused Direct that focused on some game not coming out for potentially years. But they had almost 20 Directs last year. Better Directs that were much more focused in theme and on a relavent timeframe. Nintendo also had strong promotion through social media, newsletters, the Switch news channel, and EShop promotions/sales. 2020 was perhaps the most solid marketing they've done outside of the launch of the Switch and the early Wii and DS Lite years.

The issue with these large and unfocused Directs is they don't seem to do anything except confuse and disappoint people. What was the point of overloading people with all these uninformative and forgettable clips of games and then honing the whole thing in on some unremarkable-looking Splatoon game that's not even coming out for 11-23 months?

I don't know how much of an impact a Direct has on sales, but this one had a negative response. So it might be a lot better if Directs like this have no impact on sales. They oversold stuff coming out in 1-2 years, and because of this they undersold the stuff that's just around the corner. Those games might have looked a lot more appealing if they broke them up into 3-4 smaller, better themed, more digestible Directs.

For the record, I hate making whiny sounding posts like this to try to get a marketing point across =)