| RolStoppable said: I haven't had much time to come here this week, but here are a few points in response to the development of this thread: 1. The origins of video games in the arcades and on home computers are where their differences are the most pronounced, because afterwards these two branches take cues from each other and begin to blend together instead of having a very clear distinction between them. This is a lot like it has happened to video game genres where nowadays it's commonly hard to define where one genre ends and another one begins. 2. The attitude towards Wii gamers continues to be strange, as if those people were some sort of aliens who would only ever play games called Wii-something. JWeinCom provided comprehensive counter-arguments, but I don't think that will change anything for the people who are convinced that Wii gamers are not real gamers, therefore they believe the hardware and software sales boosts for Switch must come from PS and Xbox gamers, because they are real gamers. 3. The_Liquid_Laser has a horse in this race and that's his conviction that Switch will cut significantly into PS5 sales, leaving Sony with lifetime figures of less than 80m this generation. This of requires that a lot of PS4 gamers choose a Switch over the PS5, so consequently it should already be PS4 owners who have bought Switch consoles in droves. There are ownership statistics, but they first and foremost concern countries where multiconsole-ownership is common, so they don't tell us much more than people buying Sony and Nintendo again after the previous generation where most people skipped the Wii U. In any case, this is one of those situations where I think why should I bother to argue when time itself will solve this one in my favor. 4. There is no single source of gamers who are boosting Switch's hardware and software sales. However, some groups are much more logical than others. This includes any owners of previous Nintendo consoles (home and/or handheld) because this shows in the best-selling software. The reason why Wii owners are likely to contribute a big chunk is because the Wii itself sold more units than most other Nintendo consoles, plus Wii owners themselves were commonly returning gamers from the NES and SNES. But whatever way you want to slice it, any conclusion other than owners of previous Nintendo consoles accounting for the lion share of Switch's hardware and software sales is delusional. 5. The commotion about Switch being in the same column as the Wii is annoying, because apparently it's fine that Switch and the SNES are in the same column, or that the SNES and Wii are in the same column. There's something strange going on here. 6. Regarding what I've labeled as generation 3 in my OP, indeed, the generational cycle wasn't as clearly defined as later on. Still, the Atari 5200 was a successor because it was incompatible with the Atari 2600 and the two consoles also released five years apart. But I grant that the Intellivision may belong to generation 2 rather than 3 if it really released in 1979. That would put gen 2 launches in the window 1976 to 1979 and gen 3 launches in the window 1981 to 1982. But some oddities like these persisted through generation 5, because consoles like the CD-i and Jaguar also sit more or less between two generations when only the major systems are considered. |
If you want the TL:DR version of my post this is it. If we're trying to figure out who's buying Nintendo consoles and Mario/Smash/Ring Fit/whatever for it, our first guess should be people who have bought Nintendo systems and games in those franchises in the past. The largest number of those people by far were Wii/DS owners, so that's the most reasonable explanation and it'd take some pretty heavy evidence to the contrary to counter it. Trying to suggest it's the PS4/XBox One audience who favors entirely different games is bizarre. Trying to argue that it's more of the the 25 millionish people who owned an N64 but haven't bought a Nintendo console in 21-25 years rather than the 100 million people who purchased a Wii 5-10 years ago is even weirder.
Dunno why some people are so resistant to this. It's like you left your a plate of lasagna on your kitchen table, you come back and find it missing, and Garfield and Jennifer Lawrence are in the kitchen. And you're like "DAMN YOU JENNIFER LAWRENCE, WHY DID YOU EAT MY LASAGNA?!"
IcaroRibeiro said:
1) You analysis adds absolutely nothing to the debate. I excluded Wii Sports because it was bundled so it was sell well regardless people bought their Wii for play this kind of game or if they bought their Wii to play Mario or Zelda. If I want to make an analysis of how much people bought the Wii mainly for Wii Sports type of game I need to first rule out the game that has an almost mandatory admission. And when we ignore Wii Sports (which you said to do) and Wii Play (also bundled), then 8 of the top ten franchises on the Wii are represented on the Switch by entries (or spiritual successors in the case of Wii Fit) that will sell 10 million copies. How is that not relevant? 2) Since you won't believe I don't know who do you expect those gamers to be. The first Sony console was released in 1994 and while I believe it was the first console of many gamers in several European, Latin and east asian countries there is absolute no way for it to be the same in Japan and USA. As for Xbox I don't think there isn't a thing to prove about it, Xbox was first released only in 2002, unless you are younger than 20 I will hardly believe it was the only console you ever played in your life. I really don't know what you're trying to say here. All I said was not to use anecdotal evidence. I'm sure your friends are real, but talking to a couple of friends isn't market research. I worked at Best Buy during the height of the Wii craze. I got way more anecdotes than you about what Wii gamers were like, but I'm not going to spout em off, cause they're anecdotes. 3) I understand you want to explain why Switch sales are great, while Wii U flopped and 3DS underperformed compared to DS Well DS owners being very present on Switch really makes sense to me, the only very well selling DS games that have no space on Switch are Brain Age and Nintendogs, while sales for Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, etc kept consistent in both DS and 3DS despite 3DS selling a half of DS and on Switch all those games are selling just as much or better than DS or 3DS You're factually wrong here. Mario Kart did not sell consistently, its sales dropped by about 8 million. Pokemon sales dropped by about 2 million from Diamond and Pearl to X/Y, but the drop is larger when you account for Pokemon Platinum (XY didn't have a third version, so presumably some Platinum only players would have purchases DP if there weren't a third option). New Super Mario Bros sales dropped by more than half. Mario Party by more than half. Mario and Luigi, Kirby, dropped too. Animal Crossing is the only game that sold as well or better on the DS to my knowledge. Also, Brain Age is available on Switch. Not selling nearly what it did back then, so if that's how you're judging things, you'd have to count that against lapsed DS owners accounting for the Switch's sales. The 3DS sold about 75 million. If we assume they're accountable for a large portion of the Switch base (which is absolutely reasonable), then, first off, we already have a lot of Wii user in the mix who kept buying Nintendo machines. Second of all, we have to explain why Switch sales will be so much higher than the 3DS, and why games that saw a huge drop from the Wii/DS to the 3DS are suddenly selling a whole lot better. I'm fine with the idea that past DS owners and past Wii owners are both responsible, but there's a huge amount of overlap in that group. The weird thing is that you seem really open to the possibility that DS owners who lapsed are represented on the Switch, even though 2 huge franchises are not on the Switch yet, but are so reluctant to make the same conclusion about the Wii because Wii Sports isn't represented (again it's the only 10m+ Wii _______ franchise not represented on the Switch aside from Wii Play which I refuse to count). It's just a weird stance where anybody but Wii owners could be responsible for Switch sales. However when it comes to Wii Games a set of games that brings in over 20% (a number you are so unaware of how big it is in the context of software sales) of all Wii software purchases are are mostly absent with only ONE game selling "on pair" with all those kind of games Uhhhh... wasn't I the one who brought this up XD? I know exactly how big twenty percent is in context. It's 20 percent. One out of five. That's how ratios work. And btw that number only works if you count Wii Sports, so make up your mind if you want to use that. If you take Wii Sports out of the equation the number actually drops to 11% which is less than Mario games. Consistency man! My point is that 4/5 games were not part of the Wii _______ line. For example, about 14.5% (15.6% sans Wii Sports) of the Wii sales were from Mario games, which also a huge number, if even not as huge (unless you want to not count Wii Sports in which case it is actually huger). So, we can conclude that a lot of people probably bought a Wii for Mario, and it seems reasonable that these people may buy another console for Mario games in the future. Or, alternatively, people bought a Wii for Wii Sports and then bought other series and became fans of those as well. And it seems plausible that maybe some of those people Switched over. Almost all other franchises you are quoting, Mario Kart, (New) Super Mario Bros, Mario Party are among the best sellers of any Nintendo system, either handheld or home console. If their existence does not catapulted Wii U sales I don't see why would they increase Switch sales. While Mario (mainly 3D Mario) has a very huge fandom and people who quite buy Nintendo to play them the absolute majority of Mario Party and Mario Kart sales seems to scale based on userbase, they are the perfect games to "complete your game collection" rather than "a game you buy a system for", so they absolute not explain Switch sales, nor explain why Wii U flopped As for why they would drive sales on the Switch but not the Wii, there are pretty obvious potential reasons. First off, the games weren't available on the Wii U as quickly. In the first year of the Wii U, NSMB was the only one of its major sellers that was available. A year with only one big title is pretty bad and creates a really negative buzz. 3D World didn't hit until just after a year, Mario Kart until a year and a half, Smash about 2 years in, and Mario Party about 2 and a half. In that first couple of years there was really very little else on the system either. There was Pikmin which is on the niche side, Wonderful 101 (brilliant but a flop), Lego City undercover, and Game and Wario which was planned as a pack in but bombed cause it was bad. And Nintendoland, another underappreciated title. An original Zelda didn't come till it was dead. In contrast, Mario Kart was available a month into the Switch's lifespan, Zelda (which mind you sold nearly 8 million on the Wii) was there from day 1, 3D Mario was present in less than half a year. While these were doing the heavy lifting, you also had Splatoon and Arms (not available on the Wii but likely had some appeal to the Wii base, albeit not nearly as much as those other titles) and Xenoblade Chronicles at the end of the first year. Then about a year and a half in you got Mario Tennis and Super Mario Party. You also had Pokemon Let's Go at the end of the year. Of course, the Pokemon franchise was more of a handheld thing, but there's definitely an overlap between the DS/Wii user base. And then Smash Ultimate. So, that's one reason. The games got there quicker. The Switch had sequels to a 5+, 10+, and 30+ million sellers on Wii within the first 7 months, plus some other stuff that might appeal to that fanbase to a lesser extent. Wii was riding on New Super Mario Bros for a year. By the time it got some of the big hitters, people had already written off the Wii U as a failure. There's also the fact that the games on the Switch were just better than their Wii U counterparts. Wii Fit and Wii Sports were on the Wii U, but they didn't push sales = either... because they fucking sucked. Wii Fit Plus was a sequel you could only buy digitally that added like 10 minigames and a pedometer, while Ring Fit is a novel new game that is ambitious and a much improved workout. New Super Mario Bros was a paint by numbers sequel. Super Mario 3D World was an bigger multiplayer version of the 3DS game (which was still pretty good), while Mario Odyssey was an ambitious new take on Mario. Mario Party 10 featured the crappy car mechanic that 8 started, while Super Mario Party is generally considered the best entry in the franchise in at least a decade. Even Mario Kart 8, which is largely a port is a bit better with its battle mode and DLC included (not saying it's a huge difference but it helps), and Smash Ultimate was much better received than Wii U (EVERYONE WAS THERE). So, the games were available early enough for the Switch to make a good first impression, and were by and large higher quality and more ambitious entries in the franchise. Also, the Wii U was generally a poorly designed (or at least implemented) system with confusing marketing, an ultimately unnecessary central gimmick, confusing multiplayer setup (which really did work well in the one game that used it), and a kind of bulky offputting controller. So, Wii owners didn't want to buy a crappy system that didn't get a decent library until two plus years into its life (if it ever did), but that doesn't mean they wouldn't buy a well designed console that had a decent library from the start. That's why I see a strong correlation with DS/3DS userbase and Switch userbase. But much weaker correlation with Wii userbase compared to Switch userbase, that's why I stated Wii userbase have a "minor impact on Switch sales" (minor compared to other groups like DS-3DS and PS-Xbox) And you don't think there is a strong correlation between the Wii, DS, and 3DS userbases? You think the 100 million people who bought the Wii were completely distinct from the 150 million who bought a DS (the difference really isn't that big when you consider hardware revisions, fragility of portables, software sales, and multiple DS households)? These aren't mutually exclusive categories. If there's a strong correlation between DS and Switch, the correlation's gotta be fairly strong with the Wii too. 4) Well, if half of Switch owners also own Xbox and PS4 why shouldn't I say Switch owners comes from Xbox and PS4 owners? Because... a) 50% don't. It's "above 40%" and dropping fast according to the data. b) There's no way to tell which was purchased first. They could be going from Switch to PS4. c) The data we have is limited to one source that we only have a second hand account (tweet) of to my knowledge. And surveys can be really far off (see Biden v. Trump in Wisconsin), so you should stop stating this as a fact. d) You seem to have an entirely different set of rules when it comes to the Wii. A Wii owner who had a Gamecube buys a Switch= NOTHING TO DO WITH WII. PS4 owner who had a Wii buys a Switch= ALL ABOUT THAT PS4 BABY! e) Correlation does not equal causation. If we accept PS4 owners also own a Switch, that doesn't mean their purchase has anything to do with the PS4. f) We don't know how many Switch owners also owned a Wii, it can be way higher than 40%. g) It flies in the face of what we're seeing in game sales. h) The same source shows that at least 32% of Wii owners owned a PS360, so even if 100% of Switch owners had a Wii, we'd be seeing something similar with coownership. i) I'm not sure how they're asking the question. I own a Switch and a PS4. My brother lives with me and owns a Switch, but he could play the PS4 whenever he wants but never has. If they ask him "do you have a PS4 in your household" or "do you own a PS4" those are going to yield different answers. My sister owns a Switch and her husband has a PS4. I'm in a commonlaw property state. Don't think they have a prenup, at least one that says anything about gaming devices. Does she own a PS4? If we were the only Switch owners in the world, would they said 100% of Switch owners own a PS4, 33%, or 66%? Depending on how the question is phrased and interpreted you can get any of those answers. So lots of reasons which I already addressed :-/ If you have more information or details on this survey share them, but if not you should really stop putting it forth as fact. Granted Switch is selling much better than any Nintendo hardware ever (minus DS) and how a very significant part of Switch owners also have Playstation and Xbox I'd say Switch is selling well exactly because of that. Let's take a trip back to two paragraphs ago. "Almost all other franchises you are quoting, Mario Kart, (New) Super Mario Bros, Mario Party are among the best sellers of any Nintendo system, either handheld or home console. If their existence does not catapulted Wii U sales I don't see why would they increase Switch sales. While Mario (mainly 3D Mario) has a very huge fandom and people who quite buy Nintendo to play them the absolute majority of Mario Party and Mario Kart sales seems to scale based on userbase, they are the perfect games to "complete your game collection" rather than "a game you buy a system for", so they absolute not explain Switch sales, nor explain why Wii U flopped" Reliable data shows that 40% of Switch owners bought Mario Kart 8 to play on their Switch- "This absolutely does not explain Switch sales." According to a tweet one survey says 40% of Wii owners on PS41- "I'd say it's exactly because of that." There is a really obvious inconsistency in your logic. ....and you are now arguing that the best selling game on the Switch is not driving its sales. -_-... People are not buying the Switch to play the games they then play on the Switch. For fuck's sake. Again, the facts do not bear you out. Mario Kart 7 sold to 19 million 3DS owners. It's currently at 33 million on Switch. The user base has increased by 5 million, and Mario Kart sales increased by 14. Your suggestion, that it's simply scaling with the userbase, is a mathematical impossibility. This evidence pretty strongly suggests that Mario Kart 8 is indeed a major factor in why people are buying the Switch. Which should fall under the category of "dug". I started this whole discussion because you seems to believe Sony/MS console owners are the minor factor here, while believing previous Nintendo owners + newcomers are the major factor for Switch sales Not exactly. Newcomers are harder to factor in. We have a good idea of what PS4 owners are likely to buy and a good idea of what Wii fans would likely buy. Newcomers are much harder to predict. So I'm not too sure how it breaks down between Wii and newcomers, but it seems pretty clear Wii owners are bigger than PS4 fans. Handheld userbase come in droves, checked, but home console owners? Like, I get that some people only play handhelds and some only console, but it's not like they're two warring tribes that will kill eachother on site. There's a huge overlap here, especially when one company's software is driving sales of both (i.e. Wii/DS) Switch top selling games list seems to have more in common with any other Nintendo home console than Wii, exactly because of the absence of so many Wii Sports kind of games filling their best sellers list Again, this just kind of shows the absurd inconsistency here. When we look at the top 10 best selling franchises on the Wii, 8 of them have an direct or spiritual successor (Ring Fit) sequel on the Switch that has sold or will sell ten million copies. Of the top 50 best selling games on PS4 (according to VGchartz Data) 0 have a Switch entry that will sell 10 million copies. 2 of them has a similar game that may sell over ten million on the Switch (one of them being Monster Hunter and the for the other one I'm considering Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy as being "similar" to Mario Odyssey, so that's how far we have to stretch to make this work). If you're basing this on top sellers, we'd have to conclude that virtually zero PS4 owners are buying the Switch. And, the list is only more similar to other Nintendo machines when you consider relative positions of games. Which is not relevant when we're talking about absolute numbers. Sure Mario Kart is the top selling game (I think I dunno if Animal Crossing beat it yet) on Switch and Gamecube. But that doesn't really matter because there were only 7 million people that bought Double Dash. They can't explain why Mario Kart is selling so much again. There just aren't enough of them. If 100% of Gamecube owners did not buy a Wii and did buy a Switch and 25% of Wii owners bought a Switch, Wii owners still made the bigger impact. Even under this set of batshit crazy circumstances made to support your point, it fails. |
We're at the point where you need to answer some binary questions to progress things, since you're bringing up the same points repeatedly and my responses are getting ignored repeatedly. If you refuse to answer them (they're simple) then that's just a sign you are not arguing in good faith, and I'm done (plus I'm gonna feel like I won and my epenis will grow three sizes). You can in return ask any simple binary questions you feel need to be answered.
1. Does looking at the games that are selling well on two different systems help us to determine how similar their fanbases are?
2. If so, are the games that are selling well on the Switch more similar to those selling well on the PS4, or the Wii?
3. So, is it more likely that Switch owners came from those who were primarily Wii gamers, or those who were primarily PS4 gamers?
Last edited by JWeinCom - on 03 April 2021
