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Otter on 20 July 2021
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Mandalore76 said:
Otter said:

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

Being cross gen didn't get Twilight Princess or Breath of the Wild their explosive sales though, being launch games for Nintendo's 2 best selling consoles did.  The reason they weren't Gamecube exclusive or Wii U exclusive were because the system they were designed for was flopping by the time they were ready for release.  If Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword had been held back to release cross gen on N64/Gamecube and Wii/Wii U, it wouldn't have made them suddenly sell 10-20 million copies, and it also wouldn't have suddenly made Gamecube or Wii U successful hardware.

Exactly! They were able to be launch games because they were cross gen. 

Pretty confident that if Majoras Mask launched on gamecube & N64 in 2001 it would have sold a lot more. Same with Skyward Sword in 2012 on Wii U. The point was that software sales do not make a compelling argument against a 2023 release, because software can continue selling into the next generation as well as on old hardware (Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon for exampel..... of course could have sold even better if the Switch was BC or had a port). 

Edit: GTA4 is also a great example of evergreens continuing to sell into a new generation. Every week its in the top 10 based on PS4/X1 software sales. Nothings stopping Nintendo's big hitters from doing the same apart from the eventual release of their sequels like MK9 etc

Last edited by Otter - on 20 July 2021