Nintendo Quarterly Sales Update: Switch at 139.36m shipped

[Shtinamin_]

Fight-the-Streets said:

curl-6 said:

They might phase it out quickly in favour of its successor though, so it might be a PS4 situation where it only sells a few million after replacement.

You still can buy a new PS4 Slim (and a PS4 Pro at least here in Europe and I guess in NA too). Sony just refused to give them price cuts. Anyway, Nintendo doesn't give a damn on what kind of business decisions Sony, Microsoft or any company makes. They only look for themselves! I also don't like to look back into history what happend back then in former console transitions because with the Switch a completely new era started for Nintendo. Therefore, there's little value in interpreting the past and trying to make a conclusion for the current situation. 

But even if we look into Nintendo's past console transitions, it was only 2x where they killed off a previous generation: 1. The GBA (Nintendo went into panic mode because of the upcoming release of the PSP, so they killed the GBA off and released the DS early), 2. The DS (because the 3DS wasn't selling well intially and it needed Nintendo's full attention, so they killed the DS off). In hintsight, it probably would have been better to fully support the Wii another year and not release the WiiU before end of 2013. However, I wouldn't say that Nintendo killed off the Wii because back then, of course, Nintendo fully believed in the success of the WiiU. Therefore, resources for game development were naturally taken away from Wii and brought to WiiU. Additionally, the Wii really didn't have that much more life in it. It was a fad console and this fad was gone by 2012.

In FY2026 (ending March 31, 2026), with the Switch 2 newly on the market, the Switch 1 probably will take a hit in sales of about 50% which would still be in the 5 to 5.5 mil range. These are still good numbers and too early to stop manufacturing it. Usually, console production stops when they anticipate that the yearly sales will fall below 1 mil. In that regard, the PS2 was actually killed off when production stopped in January 2013 because for this whole fiscal year (April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013), as we know, the PS2 shipped a mathematical minimum of 3.5 mil (some believe it must have shipped 4.1 mil as in Sony's financial report they didn't mention that the PS2 sales where down compared to last FY). These were still good numbers, too early to actually stop productions. However, Sony didn't have a choice as the PS3 was coming up and they still produced the PSP and PS Vita was still kinda new. There simply was no production capacity anymore for the PS2.

Nintendo on the other hand will not face production capacity issues as they will have to support only two consoles: Switch 2 and Switch 1. And even if the Switch 1 will have a short life post-Switch 2 release, it certainly will be produced for a minimum of 2 years after the Switch 2 has launched, shorter than that is just not realistic.

Pricing for Switch 1 will be interesting. If the Switch 2 releases for $400, I'm sure the OLED model will not keep the $350 price tag. Nintendo will lower the price. I don't think the OG Switch will be faded out immediately, so when the OLED goes down in price, the OG has to go down as well and so will the Switch Lite. I and others said it several times: People who will buy the Switch 1 in 2024 and beyond are price sensitive people. They will anyway not buy a Switch 2 early in its lifecycle. In other words: The post-Switch 2 sales of Switch 1 will not hurt the sales of the Switch 2 in any way!

I'm quite opptimistic (and in fact realistic) that the Switch will beat the PS2.

I gotta appreciate how well this was articulated.

I agree 100%. Nintendo does whatever Nintendoes. Most if not all consoles take a -50% decline in sales for the FY when the successors are released.
Switch will most likely put this upcoming FY at 10M, so the following FY with the rumored release of the new console being at 5M.

Nintendo keeps their old products up for at least 2-3 years after the release of its successor.
If the Nintendo successor releases at $400, the OLED should drop near $330 or even to $300 (personal speculation). The OLED has been the main seller for the Switch this past year and will be the main seller in the years to come.

The writing is in the walls, the clues are getting clearer and the Switch will outsell the PS2.