| Phenomajp13 said: Some key things and food for thought. The Switch's current sales are of course declining but are we sure this isn't expected and are they low enough to negatively affect the goal? The Switch's current trajectory of sales are on the poorer side relative to it's prior years but are they low enough and even if they remain poor up until September with Zelda and Zelda Switch Lite special edition, that's only poorer sales for 5 of the 12 months (April 2024 - August 2024). The remaining 7 months would be more than enough time to course correct starting with September flowing into the holiday season to still meet the goal. This leads to my next point.
Lets be clear here, the 13.5 million goal is verified for the Nintendo Switch only. They have told the world publicly including their investors, they intend to sale 13.5 million Switch's this fiscal year. Of course this isn't guaranteed but it is their goal and it looks quite incompetent to miss your goal which is why Nintendo always has an excuse when they do. It is a big deal! These are not fans, they are your investors. They do not care about Switch 2 possibly coming this fiscal year, either Nintendo purposely mislead them, lied, or are dumb enough to believe they thought they could meet their goal for Switch 1. No matter the excuse, it looks very bad and is likely a financial crime. They intend to meet the goal and historically speaking that was usually via price cuts, revisions, software, bundles, or any combination of the bunch. Maybe they do something else and surprise us but they intend to meet the goal.
This isn't about whether you believe in a price cut or not, feel free to doubt it, there are several posters that agree. It's just another possibility on how Nintendo could meet the goal. It could be a revision or bundles or whatever Nintendo has planned. What we are saying is that Nintendo likely has something and you should probably consider they do since they didn't set the goal for nothing and the current sales trajectory doesn't look like they will make it if they stay put. You would also need to explain why Nintendo would say publicly we expect revenue, profit, and software to decline significantly but not the hardware?
I see a lot of talk about the successors release timing and cross gen games. What we have so far is a tweet from Nintendo saying we will talk about the successor sometime this fiscal year ending March 31, 2025. Some people view that as an announcement, while others view it as an announcement of an announcement. We should keep in mind, how often has Nintendo acknowledged/announced a platform publicly without a codename? That's what they would be doing here because we still have no public acknowledgement for Switch 2's codename. For Wii, we had Nintendo publicly acknowledge it as Revolution. Same with Project Cafe and WiiU along with NX and Switch. Im not saying its impossible but doesn't seem likely to me along with the fiscal year goal. Im saying this because there seems to be this obsession with trying to place Switch 2 in Q1 2025 or else it's a delay. Im saying its very reasonable to believe it was always intended for second half 2025 or beyond and nothing I see so far points to a release in first half 2025. Cross gen games also seems fishy to me. Zelda is the franchise that Nintendo on several occasions have shown to be the favorite franchise for this type of release and yet Nintendo completely declined this scenario with Zelda ToTK. Pokemon on the other hand has shown to be the last franchise from Nintendo to move to the next platform and has a history of releasing exclusively on the prior generation yet now Im suppose to believe Pokemon Legends ZA will be a cross generational release? Even if you say Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, is that franchise large enough to carry a console release or would Nintendo risk it being over shadowed by a larger franchise? Personally Im not seeing it and fully believe those aren't cross gen at all and are intended to be the Switch's swansongs. Metroid Prime 4 Beyond in my opinion has the higher chance but I even doubt that. So for what we know so far, September has Zelda, October has Mario Party, November has Mario & Luigi, and January 2025 has Donkey Kong. Pokemon Legends ZA and Metriod Prime are slated for 2025. I certainly doubt Donkey Kong is the only release for the final quarter of this fiscal year (Q4 Jan 2025 - March 2025). Metriod Prime 4 I think is harder to predict it's release timing. I think historically its been September releases but honestly that is based on Metriod Prime 3 Corruption so im probably wrong on that. Pokemon on the other hand, I am very familiar with and can point out we have had a Pokemon Presents in February and August each year since 2021. So of course this isn't set in stone but I don't think its unreasonable to believe we will have another Pokemon Presents in August. This Presents would likely detail Pokemon Pocket (the new mobile Pokemon trading card game), we also need more Pokemon games on NSO (Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow?), and of course this could come with a Pokemon Legends ZA new trailer and release window. I do predict to get a release in February/March 2025 greatly helping the fiscal year goal. Pokemon is not the type of franchise to be announced in early 2024 and release almost two years later. A new generation of Pokemon was announced in Febuary of 2022 and released that November. Just my personal speculation, can't wait to see what Nintendo actually does! |
I couldn't agree more. At bold: That's what sticked out to me too, how can anything be significantly down except hardware - this heavily points to price cuts. It's also true that with the current sales trajectory, Nintendo wouldn't reach the 13.5m. But it was always clear that Q1 FY25 will be significantly down as last year we had Zelda: TOTK (along with Advance Wars 1+2 and well Everybody 1-2-Switch!) and this year we only have Endless Ocean Luminous, Paper Mario: TTYD and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD. As we have no banger like Super Mario Bros. Wonder for the holidays season, somehow, Nintendo has to make-up for it (to reach the forcasted 13.5m) in the remaining 3 quarters and the most likely initiative will be price cuts and/or (permanent) bundles.
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