Update: Leaker says the new Switch model he teased is next-gen, not a revision, Q1 2024 release

[Jumpin]

RolStoppable said:

Jumpin said:

There’s also the factor of third party partners. These days games can take years to develop. It’d be bad business for them to delay just because “we don’t need new hardware right now.” A really bad justification for fucking their business partners.

Also, ”we don’t need new hardware right now” isn’t even a good argument since sustainable revenue and profit maximization are going to be what their corporate is interested in. Right now, Nintendo’s revenues are dropping fairly rapidly because of a decline in sales - 7% the previous year, over 15% this year. Unlike past generations, they don’t have multiple platforms to keep the ship afloat. It’s irresponsible for a company to tank their revenue

And, while I don’t know all the details of Japanese corporate law, Nintendo could be sued by business partners and share holders for unnecessary delays.

When denouncing an argument, you should refrain from making up numbers. Because otherwise it looks like you have no idea what you are talking about.

In the previous year (ending March 2022) Nintendo's revenue was down by 3.6%, this year it's down by 1.9% by the end of December and projected to be down for the full year by ~4%.

When it comes to operating profit, it was down by 7.5% in the fiscal year ending March 2022, this year it's down by 13.1% through nine months and projected to be down for the full year by ~20%. Well, would you look at that, the figures for operating profit are quite close to what you passed off as revenue. What a rookie mistake to make.

The next error you made is that you pretended that the war in Ukraine didn't have a massive effect on the profitability on companies during the past twelve months. Nintendo isn't in an industry that benefits from the crisis (unlike energy companies who increased their margins), so the rising fixed costs for employees did cost them.

Besides, launching new hardware is a huge undertaking. It's not a period where the profitability of a company increases, unless there's an extreme situation like the total failure that the Wii U was. Succeeding a successful platform is a very different matter and the last time Nintendo had to (DS and Wii), they rushed both successors to the market which turned declining profitability of the company as a whole into outright losses.

And forgive me if I LOL at your opening paragraph. As if any third party publisher would ever make such a big upfront investment in new Nintendo hardware that it could hurt themselves.

...

Anyway, perhaps Nintendo will really go ahead and launch Switch's successor in March 2024 like the leaker suggests. That in turn would likely mean that they'll let Switch wind down without taking the full range of options to prolong its life. Or they plan to launch a rather expensive successor ($400+) and treat Switch like they treated the 3DS when it was succeeded by Switch: A low-priced option for Nintendo software that continues to see new B and C tier first party games for a couple of years. I mean, the question how Nintendo will handle the transition still lacks any good clues for an answer.

Damn… well, a thorough ass kicking is an thorough ass kicking. I got nothing other than I hand it to you.

No excuses on my part.