When will the Switch Successor launch (2023 version)

[Wman1996]

Slownenberg said:

Soundwave said:

I think 2025 would really be tempting fate, I mean maybe they can pull it off but do you really want to take that risk after what happened with the Wii and DS to Wii U and 3DS.

You can lose momentum faster than you would imagine possible. The Wii went from having a "good year" in 2010 to being pretty much drowning as a brand by 2012, these things can get away from a company in a hurry.

Price cuts are also not a big tool for console manufacturers any longer, it's not the 80s/90s anymore. Think the research internally has been done by all of Sony/Nintendo/MS and they've concluded that price cuts only give a temporary boost and long term you lose money by sacrificing the higher price point. It's not good business. People who don't want to pay much for hardware are also not that likely to be stingy when it comes to buy games too.

I don't think there is much of a market for a home only version of a Switch either.

I mean obviously price cuts and a new model will increase sales. It's not like those things wouldn't have an effect. Nintendo is planning to increase production this year and it'd be insane to even think there is a reason to do that unless they are gonna get aggressive on pushing the system.

A Switch Home isn't gonna sell an extra like 20m units sure, but it'd probably sell at least an extra 5m or so. And that's EXTRA sales, not total. Think about the people who are collectors and buy every model. Then think about the budget-conscious people who haven't bought a Switch and don't want the handheld only Lite but would buy a TV-only model at the Lite's price. Think about the people who maybe bought a Lite just because it is cheaper but would rather play on the TV and would get a Home to replace their Lite. Or people who have an old original Switch but almost exclusively play on the TV and would pick up a new TV-only model. Or the people who just have held off on the Switch because they don't play handheld and are only sort of interesting in the system and aren't gonna pay $300 for it, but a cheap TV-only system they'll buy to get the few games they want. Or families that have gotten a couple Lite's for their kids but would also pick up a cheap Home for the whole family to play together. That's a good amount of extra sales. It's not gonna keep Switch going for years longer, but it might pump Switch's 2023 and 2024 sales by a couple million each year.

And price cuts will let budget conscious people buy the Switch more as well. As well as convincing some people with the hybrid model to upgrade to the OLED if its cheaper. Price cuts ALWAYS make a difference. It's not that price cuts don't work, it's just that Nintendo/Sony/MS don't bother competing on price much anymore, instead they focus on competing using their brand and their exclusives because their brands are much stronger and and embedded in gamers now than they were in the 80s and 90s when mass market gaming was still a very new thing.

And you're getting the loss of momentum on previous systems wrong. The motion control craze of the first 3 years of the Wii was over before the WiiU even came out, plus the WiiU had its incredibly awkward single large gamepad with asynchronous multiplayer in which the other players used Wii remotes instead. It had nothing to do with losing hardware sales momentum from the Wii.

And 3DS opted for a fad tech that bloated the price of the system while not allowing the system to be that much more powerful than the DS. And smart phones and mobile games were on the scene now making a low powered handheld system of much less interest in general. Again, nothing to do with losing hardware sales momentum.

The lessons to be learned from WiiU and 3DS are to not blow your next-gen system on awkward and unnecessary gimmicks, especially when the market has already started to shift away. The market is not shifting away from Switch's hybrid gaming, so Nintendo just needs to build a much more powerful next-gen Switch that perfects the Switch design concept, and is backwards compatible with the Switch and they need to launch with a fantastic new Mario Kart and 3D Mario and keep the big games coming.

It seems likely based on the increased production news that Nintendo is focused on keeping the Switch going and making tons of money on Switch games for as long as they can. It could be that they are just totally unrealistic and think they can get more sales out of the Switch's last full year and will launch a successor in Spring or Holiday 2024. But it seems to make more sense that they aren't totally off their rocker and think there is a need to ship more Switches because they have big plans to keep the Switch going very strong. Which would imply stuff like hardware price cuts, software price cuts, plenty more big first party games, and maybe even a new model, along with the idea that they probably don't plan to start next-gen until 2025 unless things go very differently than they are planning.

I agree with most of your points, and how Switch Home would just be another option that could slightly help sales.

I don't agree entirely with your point on the 3DS. 

Biggest cost in the Nintendo 3DS is in its displays (venturebeat.com)

Even with the display being the biggest cost of the 3DS, the system total to manufacture was still only around $103 at launch. Nintendo chose to charge $249.99 at launch when they could've easily charged $169.99-$199.99 and still made a profit. The sluggish sales of the 3DS (largely because of software that failed to impress) led to a large price cut in Q3 2011 anyway to $169.99. 

The base 3DS is a lot more powerful than the DS or DSi. DS did have a lot of use of polygons and 3D environments, but they were hardly any better than the N64. The 3DS on the other hand is better than a PSP and around a PS2 with a worse resolution and more RAM. If Nintendo opted to make the 3DS as powerful as the New 3DS ended up being, it probably would've put the cost above $103 even without the costly 3D display. 

So either way, the 3DS was going to be as expensive, if not more expensive to make than it was, unless they had no 3D and stayed around the base specs they decided on anyway. That is, unless somehow the components for the specs are really cheap, but I'm not an expert on that. 

But circling back again to the Switch 2, I stand by a 2024 launch. Ramped production in 2023 just all but confirms the successor won't release in 2023. Sony was still manufacturing plenty of PS1s in 1999 with a launch of the PS2 next year. In fact, the PS1's best year was 2000. That's completely unique, as far as I know. Imagine the PS4 reaching its peak in 2020, which it clearly did not.