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Norion on 20 June 2024
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RolStoppable said:
Norion said:

Would 152.3m by the end of this fiscal year really be fully on track? Based on what the DS shipped after the 3DS came out it could end up being extremely close with it just barely making it or slightly falling short if that is where it's at by then. If it's post successor shipments are more like the 3DS then that would for sure be enough though the lack of backwards compatibility and the unique hardware differences letting it continue being its own thing instead of just being a cheaper option probably helped the 3DS in that regard.

If you base it on the DS, then you have to expect the same timeline the 3DS went through during its launch year. The 3DS tremendously underperformed which forced Nintendo to issue a major price cut that was so severe that it sandwiched the 3DS at $170 between the DSi at $150 and the DSi XL at $180. With this kind of setup it's no wonder that the backwards compatible 3DS cut into DS sales in a significant way.

We don't know what Switch's successor price will be nor its year 1 lineup, plus we lack reasons to assume that it could be as bad as the 3DS following the DS. In the event of lack of knowledge, I refrain from assuming the worst and the best case scenarios as the likeliest ones. So if we default to the middle, yes, 11m this fiscal year are good enough to push Switch past 160m.

The DS Lite also got a price cut in 2011 though so there was still some gap between it and the 3DS after that and the Switch falling a little bit short of the DS's post successor wouldn't be the worst case scenario since the DS shipped 17.5m in its final fiscal year before the 3DS came out so the Switch wouldn't need to fall off as hard to fall a bit short. The worst case scenario would be it falling off harder followed by it falling off equally as hard. The Switch Lite being a notably cheaper option will help avoid those scenarios though.

To be clear at this point it definitely has a good shot of reaching 160m, I just think there's still a reasonable chance it falls a bit short depending on what Nintendo does over the next couple years.

CheddarPlease said:
Norion said:

I don't think it'd be that certain since we don't know how much Nintendo will continue to push sales of the current Switch after the successor comes out. If they decide to not bother doing a price cut then sales of the Switch could fall off quick like the DS did since sales of the OLED would collapse at a price difference of only 50 and that model makes up over half of Switch sales. Even the standard model would probably fall off rapidly if there's only a difference of 100 between the two. The Switch Lite could help at least.

The DS is quite literally the worst-case scenario since rather than just doing nothing, Nintendo actively cut the price of the 3DS to the point where it was cannibalizing DS sales due to it underperforming. Unless the Switch 2 flops at launch the Switch should not be in nearly as bad of a position

What I said above.

Last edited by Norion - on 20 June 2024