curl-6 said:
haxxiy said:
A lot of the earlier Mega Drive sales were due to Sonic fever, though. It was eclipsed by SMB3 before that. It probably would have sold just as well had it come a year later (assuming the games weren't delayed too).
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It wasn't just Sonic, the Megadrive's technical superiority to the NES and aggressive marketing gave its early sales a strong push. If it had come a year later, it would have had less time to exploit this before the SNES levelled the playing field. Launching early let them build enough momentum that it took the SNES til like 1994/5 to catch up.
RolStoppable said:
Is this analysis or just a doom fantasy you have there? Because what Switch is getting in 2024 is worlds apart from the situation of the Wii and the Wii U in 2012 and 2016, respectively. Not just on the first party side, but also concerning third party content as well.
The other catch is that success or failure of one system doesn't mean all that much for the next system, hence why any talk of momentum is always misguided. It won't matter if Switch sees no big first party release anymore, what matters for its successor if it has a strong and robust first year lineup (first twelve months) or not, regardless of the system launching in late 2024, early 2025 or late 2025.
Lastly, you are confusing yourself in your "analysis" anyway. You try to attribute the Wii U failure to a loss of momentum in the final stage of the Wii, but at the same time don't recognize that the Wii U's final stage was even worse and yet still couldn't stop Switch's success in any manner.
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I never said it would be a fatal blow that would kill Switch 2, just that it's a misstep. They would be better off transitioning while the brand is hot rather than letting it cool. It's a consistent problem with Nintendo's consoles since the N64, the inability to transition smoothly from one gen to the next.
Wii U's premature death mattered less cos Switch also succeeded the much healthier 3DS.
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But Switch in 2024 is much healthier than 3DS in 2016 so that still doesn’t make any sense.
3DS shipments calendar year 2016
hardware-7.36 million, software-56.43 million
Switch shipments calendar year 2024 (estimate)
hardware-10+ million, software-100+ million
