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| Soundwave said: Furukawa has to get Switch 2 right. |
That doesn't paint the right picture. It leaves out the handhelds. During SNES/N64's lifetime there was the very successful Game Boy/Game Boy Color (maybe we should also mention the Super Game Boy), during GCN's lifetime there was the very successful GBA and DS. Sure, GBA to Game Boy/Game Boy Color was a decline but 1. the latter was a very unique and special situation with a very long lifecycle and 2. the former was an artificial very short lifecycle because Nintendo rushed out with the DS early because of fear of the PSP. But within it's very short lifecycle the GBA was very successful and in turn the GBA to DS was a very huge increase in sales and profits.
Further, NES to SNES is a decline but nevertheless, SNES (hard- and software) was very profitable for Nintendo. Also, coming from a quasi monopoly (NES) to a situation with a very strong competitor (Genesis/Mega Drive to SNES) is not really a fair comparison.
The N64 and GCN even more so were real disappointments sales wise. For the N64 Nintendo came in cocky, arrogant and with lots of self-confidence. They were the top dog in the video games industry. They didn't expect to lose their turf to a young lad called Sony. GCN was a disaster as Nintendo lost their self-confidence and for the first time in their video games history they tried to catch-up (to Sony) instead of leading the industry.
The biggest disaster, the Virtual Boy was basically a prototype product brought to the market. I think what happened is that Nintendo saw during development that the Virtual Boy is a bad product but somehow they missed to stop it early enough, so that already too much money went into it. They simply wanted to recoup some of the funds that went into it and therefore, decided to bring it into the market anyway, at least in Japan and NA. They never officially released the Virtual Boy in Europe.
Then there's the Wii U. We can keep that one short: A prime example to any business school of a product where everything went wrong!
Saying the above, I think it's as good as impossible that Switch 2 will sell as many units as Switch 1. To sell again 160 mil.+ (or even "just" 145 mil.) is a too tall order (as it is for any console, no matter if home console, handheld or hybrid, no matter if from Nintendo, Sony or someone else). It's simply not realistic. The question is, how many unit sales of Switch 2 will be looked at as successful? Personally, I think Nintendo's minimum target is 100 mil. The upper end will probably be around 130 mil. (depending on how long its lifecycle will be).
