Was this gen unwinnable for Xbox?

[firebush03]

Kyuu said:

firebush03 said:

It’s not “3DS erasure” as much as it is “I don’t believe 3DS is a suitable comparison.” Switch sold with $80 accessories, $60 games, and $300 hardware, whereas 3DS sold for $170 within a year a launch, with $40 games, and would eventually even have models selling for $80 by 2017. Had Nintendo sold 3DS for $300, it would’ve been a flop (as can be seen from sales prior to Fall 2011, and it is by this fact that the prices alone suggest that Switch catered to a different market). It is much more suitable to compare Switch to Wii U, which sold for similar prices and were both markets as offering home console experiences.

Portability is a huge factor for Switch's success. Wii U lacked that, and it lacked Pokemon. The PS5 is also far more expensive than PS4 on both software and hardware, but guess what? It's considered a successor. PS3 was so much more expensive than the PS2, it was a successor. Switch also had a Lite version at $200. The new price trajectory is an industry wide problem not exclusive to Nintendo.

Switch is a successor to both, and would have been a failure without the portable factor. To successfully replace the home console side of things, it needed to be more expensive and powerful than a typical Nintendo handheld. It's a hybrid that replaces both.

Agree to disagree, I suppose. The economics of a system are much more important in determining the market of a system than I think you realize. Again, the 3DS had no market when it sold for $250. A $300 price tag will shave off a tremendous portion of the portable markets; hence, it is more appropriate to say Nintendo went from 13.5mil to >153mil than it is to say 80mil to >153mil. Also, the portability isn’t what made Switch a success, but it’s library. Had Switch not launched with BotW nor Mario Odyssey, it would’ve likely done about as poorly as Wii U or GCN.