Alternate history: Switch a generation earlier

[curl-6]

IcaroRibeiro said:

curl-6 said:

No Wii game "sold over 100 million on a 90 million userbase", and it sounds like the title you mean here is Wii Sports, which was bundled with almost every system, so not a useful comparison point against games that are largely sold standalone. Sales do not scale linearly with install base anyway; PS2 sold over 150 million yet only a handful of games on it passed 10 million copies sold.

Motion controls are the default control scheme in BOTW, TOTK, Splatoon 2/3, Luigi's Mansion 3, etc and they are how millions prefer to play.

If the audience for them was gone, games like Super Mario Party, Ring Fit, and Switch Sports would have flopped as motion controls are mandatory in those games, yet they sold over 20 million, over 15 million, and over 10 million so far respectively. All three of them actually sold better than Wii Party on Wii, and SMP sold better than all but 7 games on Wii. (And is on track to pass the next two in line, Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus)

Motion controls are alive and well and here to stay.

 I meant over 100 million units combined among all wii-like games, if you want to include Wii Sports then it's close to 200 million. As this was excluding Mario Party, as it's a long franchise that was already successful without motion controls 

The Switch games where motion controls are integral part of gameolay are few. Ring Fit, Switch Sports and 1-2 Switch. They have sold roughly combined 30 million units which is less than a third of how much Wii games sold

I never stated they need to scale linearly, although Switch sells consistently more games than Wii the motion controls focused software sales have decreased substantially despite being available for a much bigger userbase 

You just need to take a look in the top 20 best selling games for each system to be sure how much motion controls have fallen. Even all the best third party games in Wii were all Just Dance, a game that heavily favored motion controls 

Of course there is always be audience for certain kind of games, but they are no longer enough to hard carry a system like they did in Wii days. For most of its players motion controls were just a fad

Fads die out within a year or two; motion controls are still thriving nearly 20 years after the Wii launched. 

They are a key feature in most of the biggest games on the Switch, both first and third party. That they're not always compulsory is irrelevant; many features of modern games are optional, including HD resolutions and 60fps. More choice is a good thing.

The audience for motion controls isn't a monolithic bloc that only cared about Wii Sports; it's a broad array of people, from those that only use their Switch for Ring Fit Adventure, to enthusiasts who use them in Doom Eternal and Sniper Elite, to BOTW and Splatoon players who enjoy those games the way they control by default, and all shades in between. It includes gamers from all walks of life; young and old, casual and enthusiast, Nintendo fan or not.

The audience hasn't disappeared, it has simply evolved over time.