Would You Consider Nintendo Switch The Most Commercially Successful Gaming Hardware Of All Time?

[HebrewGamer]

Kyuu said:

firebush03 said:

The big difference between software figures of today and yesteryear is that back in the 2000s, you could easily find NIB fresh copies of games for $5-10USD a pop. Today such deals are unheard of, and prices are only going up.

That said, by this metric alone I’d argue Switch has the most impressive software figures of any system: Majority of software sold was first-party at full price, and yet, Switch maintains the highest software-to-hardware ratio of any Nintendo system (as well as the strong software figures overall, with an unprecedented number of full-price first party releases sitting as high at 71M). 

Software revenue on Playstation is a LOT higher. But their profit margins are a lot smaller because most of that revenue comes from 3rd party content (of which Sony makes 15%-30%). Sony's own software also used to average in the low $20's in the PS4 gen vs today's high $50's/low $60s.

Switch and PS2 are from very different eras and couldn't be more different. So the comparisons strike me as pointless.

No one questions that Nintendo's own software is much bigger than Sony's. But combined software spending (now that you mention "full price") on Nintendo's plafform isn't even comparable with current Playstation.

Due to MTX, Sony generates much more revenue and profit than Nintendo. When you have a few games which can generate billions in revenue per year off a few million whales, you're gonna make a lot more money than relying on 10s of millions of one time purchases.