javi741 said:
You're definitely underestimating the Switch's sales here. The Switch will likely reach 150M without any price cut. Assuming the Switch reaches 140M by March 2024, next fiscal year a reasonable amount should be 7M the year Switch 2 launches putting it at 147M by March 2025. After March 2025 Switch sales likely won't drop from 7M automatically to 0. Nintendo will likely keep supporting Switch 1 with original games to take advantage of the large install base and keep it around as a safety net in case Switch 2 underperformed. Even with zero price cuts and Switch 2 having BC the Switch could easily sell 3M-5M after March 2025 before it discontinue. The DS still sold another 5M after the 3DS released and being around the same price, Nintendo could perform the same type of numbers with the Switch. I made the prediction of 152M under the assumption the Switch will never get a price cut, there's still a possibility it may fall just short of that but I think it's more likely it at least slightly exceeds 150M without any price cuts. If there are price cuts, especially ones as significant as what the PS2 & DS got at the end of their lifecycles, I'd say 160M has a good chance of happening, I just don't think that any price cuts are gonna happen. |
Like I said it depends on price cuts. If a Switch 2 with backwards compatibility costs $350, and a Switch OLED costs $350, nobody in their right mind would buy a Switch OLED, or even an original Switch at $300. Even if Switch 2 is priced at $400 (which honestly I doubt it will be) there won't be many Switches selling at $300 and $350, so most Switch sales at that point would be people looking for the cheap Lite. So unless Nintendo does something stupid like no do backward compatibility, if there is no price cuts on Switch by the time next gen launches Switch sales will definitely plummet to barely anything.
So if Switch is at 141m end of March 2024, assume it'll still be selling maybe two million a quarter the next 6 months, and then let's say Switch 2 comes out in the Fall, Switch holiday sales are gonna be real low. So let's say 145m by the Fall around when Switch 2 launches. If Nintendo does nothing to keep Switch sales going (ie significant price cuts to create a market for it as a cheap system compared to successor) it might still do a couple million that holiday just cuz but then will drop to a few hundred thousand a quarter in 2025, so Nintendo may as well cut off production of it by end of 2025 at those kinda of numbers, leaving it finishing at probably in the 148m-150m range.
On the other hand, if Nintendo drops Switch do say $150/$230/$280 before next gen starts, to give it a market still once a presumably backwards compatible $350 or maybe at most $400 successor launches, then sure it can still sell because it will still have a separate market for itself. In that case it can keep selling a million-plus per quarter throughout 2025 most likely and keep selling in 2026 and probably a bit in 2027. In that case we're talking probably 141m March '25, maybe 148m end of 2025, 149m March 2025, maybe 152m end of 2025, maybe even getting up to around 154m where the DS is at when it's all over in like 2027. But that scenario absolutely requires either Nintendo screwing up big time with the successor (ie no backwards compatibility or moving away from hybrid gaming or adding some costly gimmick to make it over $400) or it requires Nintendo to give the Switch price cuts. Something to give the Switch a market still instead of letting the successor completely overlap its market.
