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javi741 on 27 April 2023
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Kyuu said:
javi741 said:

The examples you used with the Switch Lite/Oled and Xbox Series X are not good examples that people wanna pay more for higher specs. Both the oled and Series X are more successful because of reasons outside of specs, the Oled is more successful because people want to have a Switch that actually plays games on the go and TV, nothing to do with specs. The Series X is more successful than the S because it has a disc drive which is something that gamers still prefer to have to this day, again the higher specs have very little to do with it.

You also claim that the most powerful system hasn't won because of problems that don't have much to do with specs, while that's partially true for certain consoles, there are powerful consoles that screwed up because a company was too ambitious with the specs that made the system overpriced, take a look at the Saturn and PS3, both overly ambitious when it comes to specs that people don't care much about which led to an unappealing price. Also, part of the reason why the DS was more successful than the PSP was because it was cheaper, same reason why the Wii was so successful against the competition, because people would rather pay less just to play the games.

A better comparison you could've used to see if people would rather pay more for higher specs is looking at the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X sales numbers against the regular Xbox One and PS4, both the regular consoles and upgrades have the exact same features, only difference is that the PS4 pro and One X have better specs and are more expensive.

  1. If it's the case that people would rather spend more for higher specs, then why didn't the One X and PS4 pro outsell the original consoles? Answer is that people don't care to spend a bit more just for higher specs and would rather just get the cheaper model that just plays the same games.

Features and specs are both important, and both translate to a cost increase. You're not getting more features/specs free of charge. I never claimed the OLED/Standard Switch outsold the Lite due to the specs difference primarily.

Series S isn't being crushed "because it doesn't have a disk drive", that's a silly and convenient excuse. PS5DE -which also doesn't have a disk drive- outranks the standard PS5 whenever available despite 1) the relatively modest $100 price difference, 2) Sony's fanbase being more physical biased than Microsoft's, 3) not being pushed as Sony's main console (It's in high demand because the specs are the same as the standard model). A Series S with disk drive at $350 would barely have any effect on sales performance. A widely available Digital Edition Series X at $399 would have a significantly bigger impact. The Xbox ecosystem is more digital-centric than Playstation's. If the solution was as simple as making a disk edition Series S, Microsoft would have done it a year ago.

PS4 Pro and Xbox ONE X were expensive for what they are, late, were never going to have a single exclusive, and didn't really offer notably better graphics. Their higher specs were mainly used to increase resolution for the limited 4KTV market. For those reasons (Combined. Not individually), they never had the sales potential of a true next gen console. It seems you arrived at the same conclusion that Phil Spencer and Microsoft did when they launched the Series S, seemingly thinking midgen upgrade trends would carry over to a true next gen console ("PS4 and X1 sold better than PS4P and X1X, therefore specs don't matter for non-enthusiasts!"). Midgen upgrades and nextgen consoles are two entirely different things.

I don't see the standard/expensive Switch 2 launching lower than $399.

Why does Nintendo suddenly need to raise the cost of their next system when it was already proven that the 300$ price point was more than successful for them? Why take that unnecessary risk to raise the consoles price to 400$? Maybe if there were a cheaper 300$ model it would make sense, but having a minimum price point of 400$ for a Switch 2 is unnecessarily risky for little to no reason.

Specs really don't matter much to the regular consumer. People in these gaming forums and the gaming enthusiasts always tend to overestimate the importance of specs like crazy, as if the average consumer actually cares enough that Mario Odyssey is running at 900p to affect their purchase, or that the average consumer actually cares that COD or other major current gen 3rd party multiplats aren't on Switch. A vast majority of the average consumers don't care that the Switch is underpowered and that its missing out of these major multiplats, at least they don't care enough for stuff like that to affect their purchasing decisions, and the sales numbers for the Switch right now prove it where it could become the greatest selling console in history despite being underpowered and missing multiplats.

Nintendo shouldn't risk raising the price just to improve on things that didn't affect the appeal of the Switch in the first place, such as it being underpowered and missing on 3rd party support. 4 out of 5 of Nintendo's Underpowered and non-multiplat systems were wildly successful, big part of that was that those systems were cheap and people didn't care about how underpowered it was.

Again, I showed many examples where price affected the consoles appeal more than specs. One big example I could give that pertains to Nintendo is that the 3DS didn't start selling well until it got that huge price cut early on from 250$ to 170$

It's fine for Nintendo to maybe have an optional,  more expensive model at 400$ for Switch 2 and have a cheaper model for 300$, but a minimum price of 400$ for Switch 2 would be unnecessarily risky.

I acknowledge that the Oled is currently outselling the regular Switch, but its over a much smaller sample size in comparison to the total number of Switch owners there are out there and many of those sales are repurchases, it isnt representative enough of the entirety of the Switch's userbase to assume that they all want the more expensive model.