Famitsu Sales: Week 32+33, 2022 (Aug 1 - Aug 14)

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Slownenberg said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Switch will sell about 2m more this year.  Conservatively, it can easily sell 3.5m in 2023 and 2.5m in 2024.  A drop of 1m YoY is actually a very steep drop.  Anyway, that adds up to 8m more by the end of 2024 and a few million more after that.  Switch should have no problem becoming the best selling system in Japan.

The more interesting goal, to me, is 40m.  Switch has a shot at reaching 40m, but that is a harder road.  It depends on what kind of support Nintendo gives the system, and another hardware SKU would help a lot.  However, they've been saying they plan on Switch being a 10 year system, so there could be a lot of support still coming.

Interesting take on 40m. As I said in an earlier comment, I think Holiday 2024 is probably most likely launch for Switch 2, and Switch will only sell 1-2 million more after 2024, leaving it at 34 or 35 million.

But if by some chance they have a bunch more games planned for Switch to release in '24 and '25, and drop Lite to $150, OG to low $230, OLED to $270, and are planning an upgraded model next year ("Pro" type model) for $350 to keep the system going for a while, and don't launch Switch 2 until say Spring '26, then yeah 40m would be doable. But that is highly unlikely. I don't see a new model coming and I think we're getting towards the end of the big games once BotW2 comes out next Spring. I don't see any reason Nintendo would drag the Switch out and let it drop down to like 10 million sales a year when it is their only system. Next year it'll drop under 20 million and so roughly a year after that it makes sense to bring out a new system to take over from Switch's dropping sales.

There seems to be a misconception about a successor console.  The successor does not cause the previous system to sell less.  There is a positive correlation, but it is not a cause.  Plenty of systems have kept selling decently even after a successor was released.  What causes the drop in sales is a combination of market saturation and declining support for the older system.  On top of that sometimes the company takes intention steps to kill off the older system (e.g. the PS4).

Nintendo has said they intend the Switch to be a 10 year system.  They intend to support it for 10 years, and third party developers will keep supporting it too as long as Nintendo does.  Lack of support will not be an issue.  Market saturation is not much of an issue either.  Switch is on track to have the best 6th year of any system.  Instead what we should expect is for Nintendo to keep trying to sell the Switch even after Switch 2 is released.  Expect bundles and price drops for hardware at the very least.  The 3DS had a couple of decent years of hardware sales after the Switch released.  Expect the Switch to do even better than that after the Switch 2 releases.