The evolution of the console market over time

IcaroRibeiro said:

JWeinCom said:

There's a few problems here.

1. First off, there's a chicken and an egg problem. For instance, I own a PS4 and an XBox One, I'm primarily a Nintendo gamer. So, if you just count co-ownership, you don't whether it is somebody who owned a PS4 who was converted to Wii, or vice versa. Knowing the gaming preference would be useful here.

For clarity's sake, I should have probably said something like "lapsed Wii gamers". What I assume was meant, (at least what I meant) was people who were Wii owners, didn't buy a 3DS or a Wii U, and now bought a Switch. These people might have bought a PS4 in the interim (like me) but the appeal of the Switch was for a Wii-ish experience.

2. Second, that figure is going down if you believe the available data (which is shaky at best). In 2018 the figure was 70%.https://nintendosoup.com/npd-70-of-switch-owners-also-own-a-ps4-or-xbox-one/

We were somewhere over 50 in early 2019 https://gamingbolt.com/over-50-of-switch-owners-own-ps4-over-40-own-xbox-one-npd-group

Now we're at over 40. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/01/more_than_40_percent_of_switch_owners_in_the_us_have_another_video_game_system

The data on this seems to all come from NPD. Possibly their data is off altogether (even if not there'd be a margin of error). But if we want to take their results at face value, that means that the number of co-owners is shrinking pretty quickly, and will likely continue to fall. This would suggest that the early adopters were generally big gamers (not surprising) who were likely to buy multiple consoles, and the newer people buying Switches are not PS4 or XBox One owners.

3. Building on that point, what about Wii? The data on that is more scarce but, as of 2009, https://www.alistdaily.com/media/most-wii-owners-do-not-own-xbox-360-ps3/ about 14% of Wii owners had a PS3 and about 26% owned a PS3. That number almost definitely went up as sales of the Wii dropped, sales of the 360 and PS3 increased, and Sony and Microsoft both directly targeted the Wii market with Kinect and Move. Depending on how many people owned all three, between 26 and 40% of Wii owners had another console as of 2009.

Considering that the number of Switch owners who own another console has been dropping and is somewhere above 40% (in the US anyway), then ultimately, the numbers of Switch owners owning a PS4One will not be too far off from Wii60 and PSWii owners. It's a bit higher, so sure, some people who previously played mainly on PS4 or XBox One are mixed in there, but that's not the driving force.

As for the "4 Wii games" argument...

1. This is pretty sketchy. I'm not sure exactly what you're counting, cause technically there are 5. Wii Sports, Play, Fit, Fit Plus, Sports Resort.

Wii Fit/Plus has a spiritual successor in Ring Fit that is actually doing quite very well. It will definitely hit ten million, and has the potential to hit 20 million in the long run. Play shouldn't count because it was purchased mainly because it came with an additional Wiimote. So, there's really only two that haven't yet come to Switch, Sports and Sports resort.

Also, if you want to say that the gamers can't be former Wii players because the games with "Wii in the title" didn't come to Switch, then how does that jive with PS4 owners accounting for a huge jump in sales? Call of Duty and GTA aren't here, Fifa ain't selling on Switch, and TLOUS style horror games aren't doing much.

2. The problem here again is that like Laser, you're conflating Wii owners with "people who bought Wii Sports and nothing else". And, that really isn't the case.

The Wii sold about 920 million games. Wii Sports/Play/Fit/Plus/Play/Motion/Party/Music etc sold around 190 million copies. This is only about 20% of what was purchased for the Wii.

So sure, there are some people who only played Wii Sports and Wii Fit and nothing else, and those people probably have not bought a Switch and likely will not unless something like that comes out, and maybe not even them.

But, a lot of Wii owners bought Wii Sports and then played Mario Kart, or Mario Party, New Super Mario Bros, Smash, Mario Galaxy, etc etc. Those people may have, and I think did in many cases, come back.

To the same point as my last post, we have tons of traditional Nintendo franchises that were on the Wii or DS, then 3DS, and now Switch. Mario Party, 3D Mario, 2D Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Kirby, Paper Mario, Smash, etc. In pretty much every case the games are solidly beating their 3ds versions, in about half, they are completely destroying them. Are these sales likely more attributable to Wii/DS players (who were the driving force the last time these franchises were successful) or PS4 owners who are now buying games in franchises, genres, and styles they don't support all that much on PS4?

I'm actually more inclined to believe very old Nintendo gamers from SNES and N64 who left Nintendo home consoles came back again to play Mario Odyssey and Breath of The Wild

O_o..?

Mario Galaxy outsold Mario 64. New Super Mario Bros Wii outsold Mario World (by a lot). And Galaxy 2 crushes Mario World 2 for what it's worth.

Considering that, why on Earth would you be inclined to believe that the group that bought less Mario, is less than half the size in absolute numbers, and last bought a Nintendo console a decade or two earlier bought more Switches than Wii owners?

It's semi more plausible with Zelda (TP sold about the same as Ocarina without GC sales, although it handily outsold LTTP), but still outside some weird Wii bias, I can't figure out why this would be logical.

1) Wii Sports was bundled outside Japan, that's why I skipped it to favor games that people actively spent their money on

2) PS4/XBONE owners are the console gamers who are used to play games with standard controllers, action-adventure, RPGs, platformers and so on. Sometimes I feel people think Nintendo gamers and PS4/Xbone gamers are two completely separate groups. It's anecdotal evidence, but almost every PS4/Xbone gamer over 30 years old I know used to play Nintendo games from NES, SNES and N64 eras (even if they played those games illegally). Just because those people are picking Sony and Microsoft for quite sometime it doesn't mean they were doomed to never buy a Nintendo home console again (specially because in reality they never really stopped playing Nintendo, as handheld sales suggest). When those guys come back? In my opinion, they are coming back on Switch

3) You are totally right, I'm biased against Wii, that's why I shouldn't have talked about Wii user base as a whole. I guess I might now have make myself clear, for Wii-only gamers I wasn't talking about gamers who have Wii but not PS3 or X360, but to newcomers, gamers who got into gaming because of Wii games (mostly Wii Sports games, as those sells humongous numbers) and they seem to account for some relevant part of that generation market.

In 6th generation a total of 212 million home consoles were sold (Dreamcast included)
One generation later this number increased to 275 million

Market growth aside it's a very big increase. As industry growth, new teenagers and kids got into gaming and overall people get more wealth such growth is expected

The problem is after 275 million hardware was sold in 7th gen so far we have 245 million (Switch Lite removed) hardware sold with both PS4 and Xbone dying, Wii U dead and it's just with Switch inflating the hell of this stats thanks to the huge influx of handheld owners who buy only handhelds (particularly common in Japan where Switch success is beyond madness) it's still a decrease of 30 million systems and I'm very inclined to believe those guys were mostly Wii owners than PS3-X360 owners for the single reason PS4 and XBone are so similar to PS3 and X360 that I wouldn't understand why those system would bleed buyers (plus sales for PS3+Xbox360 and PS4+XBone are similar)

How to explain those 30 million hardware not bought (yet) for 8th generation despite the marketing increase in all kinds of metrics? Was PS3-X360 owners who decided not buying hardware anymore? Possible, but more unlikely. Sales for PS4+Xbone are only 8 million less than PS3+X360, their userbase seems to be quite consistent, maybe declining a bit because people are ditching them in favor to Switch for a while now, but overall the numbers seems stable

For me, those are more likely the Wii owners who got into games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Resort, etc. I don't see this crowd buying Switch massively so far indeed the only game that look remotely close to Wii is Ring Fit and this game it's not going to be nowhere near as Wii Sports despite Switch being very likely to outsell Wii in 2021 already. If those gamers are Wii Sports crowd they might be really slow to pick Ring Fit

And this crowd was huge, we are talking about a series of games that together moved about 21% of the total software of a system you maybe not realize how big it is but I can't think a single franchise that was able to get that close of software share of any Nintendo system (or in any console system at all). Not even all Mario franchises combined, not even Pokemon on 3DS, nothing

So yeah, I'm not seeing this Wii-crowned accounting for a big chunk of Switch sales, not until I see a huge influx of software similar to RFA pulling the same numbers of what they used to pull on Wii days

1. If you take out Wii Sports and Wii Play (people chose to spend ten bucks for it I guess, but still shouldn't count IMO) then the only "Wii games" that put out huge numbers are Wii Fit/Plus and Sports Resort. So it's really two games you're talking about. One of which has a pseudo sequel that's selling very well.

And, if you take Wii Sports out of the picture, the top selling games are Mario Kart, Wii Sports Resort, NSMB Wii, Smash, Wii Fit, Super Mario Galaxy, Just Dance, Wii Party, and Mario Party 8.

With the exception of Sports resort and Just Dance (which I'm only excluding for lack of data, although I guess if it was truly doing amazing Ubisoft would have said something) those are pretty much the same kinds of games that are doing well on Switch. They'll all have 10 million plus selling sequels or spiritual successors on the Switch, so that indicates similar people are buying the system.

2. When you start by saying "I know it's anecdotal evidence, but" that's where you should stop.

3. How to explain those 30 million hardware not bought (yet) for 8th generation despite the marketing increase in all kinds of metrics?

I don't have to, because nobody was arguing that the Switch recaptured 100% of the Wii audience. That's not the question we were addressing. We're addressing why the Switch is selling so much better than the Wii U and 3DS.

4. I guess I might now have make myself clear, for Wii-only gamers I wasn't talking about gamers who have Wii but not PS3 or X360, but to newcomers, gamers who got into gaming because of Wii games (mostly Wii Sports games, as those sells humongous numbers) and they seem to account for some relevant part of that generation market.

...

You claimed half the user base "comes from PS4 or XBox One" because Switch owners own those systems (regardless of whether or not they owned any other consoles)... but, if someone who owned a Wii buys a Switch, it doesn't count unless they only owned the Wii and nothing before and even then, they only really count if they were one of the people who bought it for Wii Sports/Fit...

You've sort of stacked the deck there, haven't you? Let's use the same standard for all the systems. How many Switch sales do you think are coming from people who entered the market with the PS4?

4. And this crowd was huge, we are talking about a series of games that together moved about 21% of the total software of a system you maybe not realize how big it is but I can't think a single franchise that was able to get that close of software share of any Nintendo system (or in any console system at all). Not even all Mario franchises combined, not even Pokemon on 3DS, nothing.

No, it's actually a pretty small crowd, since you're excluding anyone who bought a Wii for some other game, or anyone who bought a Wii for Wii Sports/Fit and also wound up buying other games for it (considering how much sales of other franchises grew on the Wii, there had to be a lot of those).

5. So yeah, I'm not seeing this Wii-crowned accounting for a big chunk of Switch sales, not until I see a huge influx of software similar to RFA pulling the same numbers of what they used to pull on Wii days

Of course you're not seeing it, because you've defined Wii owner in a way that makes it an impossibility.

You've basically defined "Wii owner" as someone who bought a Wii for Wii _________ and only Wii ___________, never played any of the other games for Wii, and won't buy any machine in the future unless it has Wii ___________. And, if you define it that way, then obviously they can't make up any portion of the Switch sales, unless some Wii ______ equivalent is on Switch.

But... in fact, Wii owners bought other games. They bought 35 million copies of Mario Kart (about 30 million more than the previous best selling console version) about 13 million copies of Smash (5 million more than on Gamecube), 30+million copies of NSMB, 12 million copies of Mario Galaxy (+ 7 more of Galaxy 2), 9 million copies of Mario Party (about 6 million more than the previous best seller), and so on.

So, I really can't see how people who bought Nintendo consoles in the fairly recent past, and bought a lot of the same kinds of games (a lot of them in the same series) that are selling on the Switch are not the most likely reason the Switch has expanded so much beyond what the 3DS audience migrating could explain aren't the most likely source of the influx of players.

Why would people who have never bought any games at all, or people who primarily played on the PS4 and played types of games that aren't selling well on Switch be more likely suspects?

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 02 April 2021

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