The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[XtremeBG]

javi741 said:

Smartphones are definitely a huge competition to the handheld market even still. I mean, total dedicated handheld sales from the PSP/DS gen to PS Vita/3DS gen went from selling around 235 Million Total to 93 Million, the obvious reason for that was cause many people who brought the DS moved on to smartphone gaming by the time the 3DS came out. Yes I agree smartphone gaming & handheld console gaming are completely different experiences, but for people who primarily care about casual games, smartphone games for many people get the job done to the point where those same DS owners didn't feel the need to upgrade to a 3DS, so yes smartphone gaming is still a big threat to the handheld market.

Also I'm not sure why you're using a handheld generation from 15-20 years ago instead of a more recent, accurate representation of the handheld market today. The most recent handheld generation sold a combined 93 million, which the Switch blew past where it's gonna reach 150M+ in its lifetime. So even if you wanna use the argument that people are buying the Switch primarily as a handheld, the Switch alone blew expectations of what was capable of the handheld market in this day and age where the previous handheld generation only sold 93 Million total while the Switch sold 150+ Million.

The 235 Million handhelds sold in the PSP/DS era isn't an accurate representation of the total handheld market today, smartphone gaming didn't exist and those were the only real platforms available to play games on the go. The Switch has to deal with strong competition from smartphones but was able to stand out enough due to its hybrid nature. You have to remember as well that before the Switch launched many people doubted it's success because many people moved to smartphone gaming, proving smartphones were at the very least a threat to the handheld market at the time.

Yes, there maybe casual gamers, that stick to phones to play, which otherwise they would bought Switch for. I agree with that. However I talked about handheld console market in general, and the phones does not go in that category. The handheld console market is entirely for Nintendo now.

I used handheld generation from 15-20 years ago not to represent the handheld market today, but just to make the point, that it's not mind blowing (for the handheld market itself, not the Switch as a system) to reach 170M because it's already been there. My target was never to represent the handheld market today, just to answer to your post, that if you change the point of view, and look at it as a handheld market, we already have been so high, even higher (240M). That's all. And this has nothing to do with the Switch itself. It's the market in general. Of course the phones have takes sales from it, however this does not change the fact that 170M sales for handheld market today is not so mind blowing since we have already been at almost 240M in the handheld market before. It's mind blowing for a single system as is the Switch.

Yes the Switch has to deal with the smartphones market, but my point in the other post was that there is no direct competitor in the handheld console market, such as PSP for example was for the DS.