The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

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CosmicSex said:

With the recent news of the Switch successor and its capabilities, I feel like Switch will fall short of 160 million units. Assuming that the Switch 2 is coming out next year, I expect it to cause a major dip in Switch sales. Especially, as many of you have mentioned, given the lack of sales price. Then depending on what Nintendo wants to do, I think we can all agree that when the new console drops, its gonna take more than a $50 price drop to carry Switch sales. I think that we may see a $150 Lite price while the full console is discontinued. If we are currently at 130 million units, I can see at max another 15 million units. It may even, given enough time, catch the DS. The PS2, however, will be firmly out of range.

Nintendo's target for this fiscal year is 15 million and they are on pace to make it; this will result in just above 140m LTD by March 2024. Switch's successor won't launch before fall 2024, so your projected 145m lifetime will almost certainly be reached before the first Switch 2 unit is sold.

All the hardware price discussion for Switch and its successor by the time Switch 2 is out is speculative. But it wasn't so long ago that it was doubted that Nintendo will do anything; recently it has been confirmed that there will be value-added Switch and Switch Lite bundles as well as a Mario OLED for the final three months of 2023 at least. What 2024 holds is yet to be determined, but it's unlikely that it will be nothing.

Likewise, it's not clear yet what 2025 and beyond will bring, but Switch 2 won't be cheap and it's likely that Nintendo will want to offer something in the lower price segment until Switch 2's costs can be brought down to an adequate level to fill that role too, so the Switch platform isn't heading for an abrupt discontinuation.