Why are Nintendo Switch sales peaking much later than other Nintendo consoles?

[Jumpin]

RolStoppable said:

curl-6 said:

Switch has yet to receive a price cut for the base model and has only had one revision as yet; both could substantially boost sales, but for the moment they're still struggling just to meet demand for the full price launch model. It also has tons of heavy hitting software still to come.

I struggle to think of another system that still had this many cards still to play as of it's 4th birthday. We may not even have seen its peak yet.

It's possible that we have yet to see the peak, although last year's COVID boost makes that a high hurdle. Without COVID, 2020 would have been bigger than 2019, but not by quite as much; in that case, 2021 could have easily been bigger than 2020.

Rather than the peak though, the more interesting thing is the duration of Switch's sales plateau. I'm sure there are a lot of people who think that 2021 will be Switch's last good year, but given that Nintendo still has the obvious options for price cuts and revisions, I expect another three years above 20m units each.

What would make things really interesting is if Nintendo's revision this year is a Pro-like upgrade rather than a DSi-like upgrade. In that case, Switch wouldn't have a problem to last well into 2025 before a successor needs to be released. An even more curious scenario is if Switch became an iterative platform, meaning a more up-to-date version every four years; however, breaking out of the cyclical console business is a tough ask and we'll have to see how things develop in the coming years. Perhaps Nintendo will be the first company who can pull this off, and if that happened, Switch wouldn't only become the best-selling console of all-time, but likely go well beyond the 200m mark.

The more conservative expectation is that Switch will need to be replaced in 2025, so the chance to become the best-selling console of all-time is good, but not guaranteed yet. Unlike other goals, like beating the PS4's lifetime sales which is merely a question of when at this point.

Not to mention a killer app with nuclear explosive like power,  New Hosrizons in this case, tends to come around only once a decade. What are the chances Switch can get another game like that?

.....by my conjectured data, 1 in 10!

In all seriousness, it would need a strong lineup this year along the lines and effectiveness of Touch Generations in the DS era to stack up on 2020. (Is stack up a thing? Or did I just invent an idiom?).

Last edited by Jumpin - on 03 March 2021