The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[The_Liquid_Laser]

killer7 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

People are still lowballing the Switch.  At the end of the current FY, total shipments will be around 153-154m.  At the end of the next FY, shipments will be around 163m.  After that it will sell just a few million a year, but it will likely be around 170m when manufacturing stops.

I have witnessed a lot of wishful thinking about Switch sales just stopping for the past 7 years, and people are still doing it.  There is still a Pokemon game on the way, and yet people are assuming that Switch sales have to fall off a cliff at some point.  Folks, the cliff is never coming, and it never was coming.  Expect gradual declines instead.

170 million? I don't know. How can it get there? I am even willing to bet my head that it won't do numbers this high, but no lower than 155 million, expect the Switch 2 is an upgrade/ not a sucessor. I see 155 million as the floor for march 2027 and discontinuation no earlier than that date. IF Nintendo gets to around their FC (153 million/ 154 million) the PS2 is a lock. If not (152 m- 153) we will have to wait till march 2026 to find out if it has a chance in 2026/27. 

Fight-the-Streets said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

People are still lowballing the Switch.  At the end of the current FY, total shipments will be around 153-154m.  At the end of the next FY, shipments will be around 163m.  After that it will sell just a few million a year, but it will likely be around 170m when manufacturing stops.

I have witnessed a lot of wishful thinking about Switch sales just stopping for the past 7 years, and people are still doing it.  There is still a Pokemon game on the way, and yet people are assuming that Switch sales have to fall off a cliff at some point.  Folks, the cliff is never coming, and it never was coming.  Expect gradual declines instead.

I want to believe but isn't this a bit too optimistic? If the forecasted 12.5 mil can be held until the end of this fiscal year we would be at 153.82 mil, right at your ballpark of 153-154 mil. You predict that shippments will be at 9-10 mil for FY 2026. This would be a decline of only 20-28% compared to FY 2025, in a year where the successor comes out. I don't think this is realistic, even with a price cut and a new SKU-model.

One reason the Switch won't sell terribly next FY is that Switch 2 is not releasing until sometime next FY.  For a portion of next FY, the Switch will still be Nintendo's main platform.

However, the even bigger reason that Switch will continue to sell decently well is that Nintendo does not like to put all of its eggs into one basket.  They are going to keep making First Party software for Switch at least until 2027.  They are also going to try to keep selling some amount of hardware until then as well.  Nintendo kept featuring 3DS software in its Directs even well into 2018.  Why did they do this?  Because they didn't want to put all of their eggs into one basket.  Two extra years of 3DS software was planned before the Switch even released.  Once they saw the Switch was successful, then they saw they didn't need to keep supporting the 3DS, but they still had 2 years worth of software in the pipeline, so it got support until 2018.

Switch is in a similar boat except that it is far more profitable than the 3DS is.  Nintendo does not want to kill it off.  Furthermore almost all of the hard work of making it successful has already been done.  So far, during this FY, they are about as profitable as 2019, even though 2019 had a fantastic software line up, and this year we've basically just had minor titles like a 2D Zelda.  Switch still produces a ton of profit with minimal effort to support it at this point.  They aren't eager to kill it off.  On the contrary, they are going to keep it going until 2027, at least, in case the Switch 2 is a flop.  (And if Switch 2 does flop, then they'll keep supporting Switch even further.)

Basically, Nintendo is still interested in keeping Switch a relevant platform for a few more years.  They need to hedge their bets, and Switch will continue to be very profitable for them with minimal effort.