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Norion on 24 February 2023
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anonymunchy said:
Norion said:

There's a limit to how many new players can be enticed though. The vast majority of people who'll ever buy a Switch have already bought one at this point so new software can only do so much to slow down the decline now. 

My last comment is based on things such as Nintendo's stock taking a hit recently due to them cutting their forecast due to lower than expected demand. The investors will obviously be unhappy if Nintendo lets hardware and software sales decline throughout all of 2024. Public interest in it is clearly in the decline phase now.

Selling another 40 million at this point would still mean that the majority has already purchased a Switch. I'm not saying it's going to keep selling 20 million every year, just that a decline doesn't have to be at a steady pace, hence my example of 3DS selling 7 million for 4 years, it didn't drop lower until the Switch was released. The Switch is in a much healthier position than the 3DS, so maybe it can sell 12 million for 4 years until a new console is released. I'm not saying it's going to, just that with proper game support, price changes and hardware iterations and not announcing a brand new console, it's possible.

Investors will be unhappy if Nintendo doesn't do anything, but why would releasing a brand new console be the only solution? The Switch just sold 19 million last year and software sales are basically flat, decline is very relative here. We've just been spoiled by the insane numbers it has been doing. People are acting as if sales dropped below 10 million and they better hurry getting out a new console or Nintendo will be irrelevant. 

I don't think that sort of scenario is possible, there's just not enough people left in places like Japan without a Switch to keep it going that high for that long. Europe is relatively untapped but Europeans aren't as into the Switch as people from NA and Japan so they'd need to cause an surge of interest there somehow and I'm not sure how they suddenly could.

Software sales were only down slightly but are gonna start declining quickly now based on their forecast for this quarter and the evergreens slowing down so the ideal business move is getting the successor out once they've gotten a lot of use out of the high install base but not waiting too long to where they have multiple poor quarters. And it wouldn't be hurrying, November 2024 is still nearly a full two years away. 2023 would be hurrying but 2024 would be a good pace since to compare it to the PS4 it peaked in 2017 and the PS5 released 2020 so the Switch peaking that year and the successor not coming till 2024 would be an even longer gap due to its higher sales peak than the PS4.