archbrix said:
RolStoppable said:
Furukawa has repeatedly stated that the historical 5-6 year cycle isn't smart, that's why Nintendo is looking to give Switch a longer lifecycle than previous consoles, because when the market allows it, why shouldn't Nintendo follow that. So far their actions have backed up these words, be it pricing of the console itself or game announcements which in the past used to wind down from year 5 onwards, but that isn't the case this time around.
Whenever the situation allows it (meaning good hardware momentum), Nintendo times releases to maximize profitability. So your idea that games are supposed to release as soon as they are completed fails to take into account that Nintendo isn't selling only software. Likewise, it's easy to reschedule work on games that are currently in development, so in case there would already be games in development for a Switch successor, their production timeline would get stretched out or put on hold due to higher priority for Switch games in the nearer future.
The reason why selling only 10-15m Switch units in a year would still be fine is because the userbase would still be very active and buy a ton of games. There's much more profit to be made from software than from hardware, hence why rushing out a successor doesn't make sense. Aside from that, Switch's sales momentum is too good to fall to only 10-15m in 2023.
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@bolded: People really need to take note of this. Super Mario Bros 3 released five years after the NES launched and went on to become the console's biggest selling stand-alone game of all time - by far. Unlike with the Wii, Nintendo seems to be doing right by the Switch and its potential to keep selling tons of software by not rushing out a successor. Still plenty of games to be made for the Switch; especially when the console will still be shipping close to 20m units in 2023 with all of the options Nintendo still has left to make sure that happens.
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Nothing is stopping a Switch game released in its 5th year becoming its best selling title. There isn't this binary where either Zelda BOTW2 sells 30m or Nintendo Launches Switch 2 in 2023....End-of-life software tends to perform worse but end of Life software which is on 2 platforms have better legs. Both Zelda games to break sales records for the franchise have been cross-gen. Miles Morales has remained in the UK top 10 for most of the year thanks to being cross-gen and launching alongside a new platform. PS4 software like TLOU2/Ghost/FFVII, still had a great year in 2020 despite the launch of a new platform during the Holiday.
People are forcing a 2023 release vs 2024 into a make or break thing, its simply not. If one year makes sense, the other can't be far off
Last edited by Otter - on 20 July 2021
