The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[Shtinamin_]

Garrus said:

Nintendo always makes the same mistakes. They hold on too long to their platforms. They should have had the Switch 2 out this holiday season, it would have been 6.5 years old, more than long enough. Not surprisingly the sales will have collapsed by the time the 8th year of sales starts in March.

What are you talking about, I will name some examples of other companies holding on to other consoles. And then I will explain Nintendo's game plan regarding the Switch.

PS3: sold for 7 years before the PS4
PS4: sold for 7 years before the PS5
PS5: will sell for 7 years before the PS6
Xbox 360: sold for 8 years before the Xbox One
Xbox One: sold for 7 years before the Xbox Series X/S
DS: sold for 7 years before the 3DS.

So no, Nintendo is not making a mistake by "holding on too long". 7-8 years is a perfectly normal life cycle.

Nintendo's game plan with the Switch. They are innovating. They made the first successfully support hybrid console. And their goal with the Switch was to rewrite what a life cycle looks like, they planned to have the Switch lifecycle to be near 10 years.

Garrus said:

Zippy6 said:

Based on the YoY numbers we have so far I'm guessing the Switch this November will have sold around 1.8m compared to 2.83m the year before. So globally a YoY decline of around 36%. We'll see when the numbers come out.

I expect December won't be as big of a decline, but then again I didn't expect November in the USA to decline like this for any of the consoles.

Well there was no Pokemon and no Christmas game from Nintendo.

There was a very bad Call of Duty game and nothing new from Sony.

Microsoft is just a mess. They've also destroyed all their sales overseas with large foreign exchange related price increases. Canadians aren't gonna want an Xbox anymore that is for sure.

The one thing that might have helped Sony would have been an awesome PS5 slim but the PS5 slim is terrible.

So altogether seems fair enough, time for a new Nintendo console! My body is ready! Let's go! Nintendo is the only one I really want to buy, they just need good hardware ala Gamecube. RTX 4060 in a box for a change.

Very true, there was no Pokémon, and that was expected. Pokémon comes out with a mainline game every 3 years (and their last meeting speculated that they may slow down with such quick releases). And they produce at least 1-2 smaller games (let's go, remake, dlc) every year. This year was the DLC year. So next year will involve either  Let's Go, a remake, or a Legends. The Christmas game was released in November, Super Mario RPG and the bigger game was released in October, Super Mario Wonder. Those are the holiday games for 2023 from Nintendo.

Call of Duty is still the most sold game in the US, its biggest market.
Sony also had its holiday game release in October, Spider-Man 2.

I hope the companies can see that they need to release a dedicated holiday game if they want to see an increase of sales, and not just coast it to the end of the year like this one.

Also if you've been reading the rumors (and taking them with a grain of salt) you would be hearing about what Nintendo has planned, and apparently the jump for Switch to NG will be huge for Nintendo.

Zippy6 said:

javi741 said:

The sales analysts in U.S & Europe stated that the lack of Pokemon really hurt the Switch in November, makes sense. When you have the fastest selling exclusive in history launch in November last year compared to a much more niche game like Mario RPG you should expect bigger declines. That's why I'm not expecting December to be as big of a decline. Nevertheless, if the Switch's entire holiday sales are down 35% compared to last year the Switch will only sell 5.3M, far lower than the general expectation here of 6-7 Million and the Switch's worst holiday quarter yet.

Yes I would be shocked if December was even close to as big a decline. I'm guessing the December YoY drop will be less than 20%.

Hopefully, the big three see this and make an adjustment for next year to focus on having an exclusive or at least a big seller for the next holiday season. This one seems a bit lackluster. Most of the holiday games came out in October (and our society is too much in the I want it now and give me the next quick mindset). 
I would love to see the Switch pull off a 7M holiday sale. But seeing how things are looking, 5.3 from javi741 seems very reasonable. Jan, and Feb will each sell just shy of a million each, so yes Nintendo will make it to their fiscal target, but only by the hair of their chiny chin chin.