Does Nintendo need to launch the Switch 2 in 2024?

[Shadow1980]

burninmylight said:

Well damn. I was just thinking a couple of days ago that that Wii-like cliff won't be a problem for Switch.

I don't really go thread hunting these days; I just stick to whatever the newest ones show up in the latest hot topics. I figured the only times sales threads with hard data are relevant anymore are after quarterly earnings and sales reports. Still, it's good to be informed.

No problem.

As for the Wii–Switch comparisons, their post-peak trajectories actually have several things in common, at least in the U.S.:

1) Assuming the Switch is replaced later this year, there was a roughly 4-year gap between when both systems peaked in the U.S. and when they were replaced.

2) The Wii sold nearly 4.58M in 2011, down 55.4% from its peak year of 2008.  and. Assuming my predictions for December hold true, we're looking at ~4.28M units for the Switch for 2023 as a whole, 52.3% down from the peak year of 2020. So, that's very similar declines from peak year to three years later.

3) The Wii declined 35.8% from 2010 to 2011. The 2022 to 2023 drop for the Switch was 26.2%, again assuming my prediction for December holds true (the final number could be 2-3 percentage points off from that). That's not as bad as the Wii's 2010-11 drop, but the Switch's 2023 did benefit from Q2 being up a bit YoY due to TOTK and the associated LE OLED SKU, which offset significant declines in Q1, Q3, and almost certainly Q4. Take Q2 out of the equation, and the rest of 2023 was down ~36% YoY (plus or minus 2-3%), again comparable to the Wii's drop from 2010 to 2011.

If the Switch has a similar drop-off this year as what the Wii experienced in 2012, it will end up selling under 2M units in the U.S., I doubt it'll be that bad, but I doubt it'll reach 3M. Probably somewhere in the 2.5-2.75M range if I had to guess. We'll have to see what happens with sales here in the first quarter, which should clue us on how well the Switch will fare in 2024. January being under 200k would be an early warning sign of a (relatively) slow year for the Switch.

Of course, in Japan the Wii and Switch had very different sales curves, the latter faring much, much better. The Wii peaked in its first full year. 2011 was a mere 23% of 2008 sales. The Switch didn't peak until its fourth year (and fifth; 2021 was nearly identical to 2022), and 2023 as a whole is looking to be down only around 33% or so from that peak. Nevertheless, its Q4 2023 is not looking so hot (worst November and, so far, worst December, and it's not even close for either), and given the typical post-New Year drop-off, we should probably expect its worst January ever as well.