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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - How can Nintendo gamers even talk about other system failing?

thismeintiel on 05 February 2013
Aielyn said:

I feel I should point out to both of you that we don't actually know the exact number sold, in part due to the fact that nobody is tracking sales of the system anymore. We know how many Sony have shipped, and that's the best we have. Has it sold over 156 million? Maybe. Maybe not. Both of you need to see that we don't have enough information to be certain either way.

As for how many the DS can sell before Nintendo discontinues it... I think it goes well beyond reasonable to presume to tell anybody when Nintendo will discontinue the DS. There's things we don't know exact values for, and then there's this - something which we don't even have a ballpark figure for. You have NO idea how long Nintendo will continue to sell the DS for, or how consistently it will sell in that time.

The best thing you can say right now is that it's not a given that the DS will overtake the PS2. It's also not impossible. Stop trying to argue otherwise.

Well, I'm going to say it is pratically impossible.  There is no way that Nntendo is going to sell ~3.7M more DSs before the end of 2014, when Nintendo will most likely disontinue it, if not earlier.  At most, they are probably looking 1.5M-1.8M, if it isn't discontinued earlier.  As for the shipped vs. sold argument, it's irrelevant.  This is going to be based on shipment numbers, the only hard numbers we have, not speculated sold sales.  Besides, this late in their lifcycles, the PS2 will have ~250K on shelves, while the DS will probably have ~500K on shelves.  Those shipped numbers will eventually become sold, anyway.



 

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Aielyn on 05 February 2013
thismeintiel said:
Well, I'm going to say it is pratically impossible.  There is no way that Nntendo is going to sell ~3.7M more DSs before the end of 2014, when Nintendo will most likely disontinue it, if not earlier.  At most, they are probably looking 1.5M-1.8M, if it isn't discontinued earlier.  As for the shipped vs. sold argument, it's irrelevant.  This is going to be based on shipment numbers, the only hard numbers we have, not speculated sold sales.  Besides, this late in their lifcycles, the PS2 will have ~250K on shelves, while the DS will probably have ~500K on shelves.  Those shipped numbers will eventually become sold, anyway.

The DS sold 2.15 million units in the last nine months of 2012. How do you figure that it will sell only 1.8 million in the next two years?

Let's restrict attention to the Americas. April-December 2011, it sold 2.35 million units. April-December 2012, it sold 1.92 million units. At that trend, it would sell over 1.5 million units April-December 2013 alone. Also keep in mind that the DS numbers include DSi (which does count as DS, because there wasn't really any new software that was DSi-only, not counting downloadable software).

The GBA kept selling well into the life of the DS. There's no reason to assume that the DS will work differently from here on.

Note that the low expected shipping numbers for January-March are likely to be due to shipments happening in December, rather than because of slow sales in January-March. Even at the current sales rate of 25,000 per week (the DS sold more than that in some earlier weeks), in the 13 weeks of the quarter, they'd sell over 300,000 units... but the shipment prediction is just 150,000. Indeed, in the three weeks that lie fully within 2013 so far, the system has sold over 90,000... it's going to sell more than 60,000 more in the next nine weeks.

Anyway, just a bit of food for thought, that last bit.



Yakuzaice on 05 February 2013
Aielyn said:

The DS sold 2.15 million units in the last nine months of 2012. How do you figure that it will sell only 1.8 million in the next two years?

Let's restrict attention to the Americas. April-December 2011, it sold 2.35 million units. April-December 2012, it sold 1.92 million units. At that trend, it would sell over 1.5 million units April-December 2013 alone. Also keep in mind that the DS numbers include DSi (which does count as DS, because there wasn't really any new software that was DSi-only, not counting downloadable software).

The GBA kept selling well into the life of the DS. There's no reason to assume that the DS will work differently from here on.

Note that the low expected shipping numbers for January-March are likely to be due to shipments happening in December, rather than because of slow sales in January-March. Even at the current sales rate of 25,000 per week (the DS sold more than that in some earlier weeks), in the 13 weeks of the quarter, they'd sell over 300,000 units... but the shipment prediction is just 150,000. Indeed, in the three weeks that lie fully within 2013 so far, the system has sold over 90,000... it's going to sell more than 60,000 more in the next nine weeks.

Anyway, just a bit of food for thought, that last bit.

The GBA shipped 4.34 million in the 3rd fiscal year of DS availability.  The DS is forecasted to ship 2.3 million in the 3rd FY of the 3DS.  The GBA only managed another 2.05 million in the next three FY's.  If the DS follows that trend, it will only ship another 1.09 million units in its lifetime.  If it drops off like the GBA did in America (3M out of that 4.34, then only 540k out of the 2.05M.) it would only see another 414k after this fiscal year.

Like you said..."There's no reason to assume that the DS will work differently from here on."

It's very unlikely the weekly DS sales on VGC are accurate.  For one, it still has DS sales over shipments.  Two, we know Nintendo only shipped 30k outside of the Americas last quarter, yet VGC has the DS selling almost 700k outside the US since September.  Three, we know DS sales peaked at less than 17k in Europe over the holidays, yet somehow it is selling at about half that in mid January when everything else is down ~85%.



thismeintiel on 05 February 2013
Yakuzaice said:
Aielyn said:

The DS sold 2.15 million units in the last nine months of 2012. How do you figure that it will sell only 1.8 million in the next two years?

Let's restrict attention to the Americas. April-December 2011, it sold 2.35 million units. April-December 2012, it sold 1.92 million units. At that trend, it would sell over 1.5 million units April-December 2013 alone. Also keep in mind that the DS numbers include DSi (which does count as DS, because there wasn't really any new software that was DSi-only, not counting downloadable software).

The GBA kept selling well into the life of the DS. There's no reason to assume that the DS will work differently from here on.

Note that the low expected shipping numbers for January-March are likely to be due to shipments happening in December, rather than because of slow sales in January-March. Even at the current sales rate of 25,000 per week (the DS sold more than that in some earlier weeks), in the 13 weeks of the quarter, they'd sell over 300,000 units... but the shipment prediction is just 150,000. Indeed, in the three weeks that lie fully within 2013 so far, the system has sold over 90,000... it's going to sell more than 60,000 more in the next nine weeks.

Anyway, just a bit of food for thought, that last bit.

The GBA shipped 4.34 million in the 3rd fiscal year of DS availability.  The DS is forecasted to ship 2.3 million in the 3rd FY of the 3DS.  The GBA only managed another 2.05 million in the next three FY's.  If the DS follows that trend, it will only ship another 1.09 million units in its lifetime.  If it drops off like the GBA did in America (3M out of that 4.34, then only 540k out of the 2.05M.) it would only see another 414k after this fiscal year.

Like you said..."There's no reason to assume that the DS will work differently from here on."

It's very unlikely the weekly DS sales on VGC are accurate.  For one, it still has DS sales over shipments.  Two, we know Nintendo only shipped 30k outside of the Americas last quarter, yet VGC has the DS selling almost 700k outside the US since September.  Three, we know DS sales peaked at less than 17k in Europe over the holidays, yet somehow it is selling at about half that in mid January when everything else is down ~85%.

To add to your post, the reason the GBA did so well after the DS was launched is because it was just over 3 years old when the DS launched.  The DS was over 6 years old when the 3DS was launched, so its drop off is going to be much quicker.  My 1.5M-1.8M may end up being a very optimistic prediction.



 

J_Allard on 05 February 2013

Why are people arguing about the PS2 as if Sony is ever going to start giving us real numbers again lol.



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torok on 05 February 2013
Raze said:
spurgeonryan said:

When the Wii U is in the state it is in. The 3DS is just finally fully recovering from a disasterous blanch, and the Wii went out with a whimper.

 

Does it make them feel better?

I guess we can also poll the Sony fans, considering the abymal PS3 launch and their late recovery. ;)


No, no, no. PS3 doom was a long time ago. Then we got the 3DS doom, Vita doom and now Wii U doom. We must keep an order on it, one at time, everybody is doomed!



Bet with jetforcejiminy: PS4 will pass the Wii lifetime numbers.

thismeintiel on 05 February 2013
J_Allard said:
Why are people arguing about the PS2 as if Sony is ever going to start giving us real numbers again lol.

They probably will once they are truly done with the PS2.  Maybe in their FY 2012 report.  Still, you can use logic and the PS3+PS2 shipment numbers to come up with a number that will be close enough to the real number, which is how I got the 157M+ figure.  Besides, DS still has 1.43M to go before it even matches the PS2's number we got from March 2012.



 

prayformojo on 08 February 2013
Aielyn said:
prayformojo said:

Nintendo has released 6 home consoles, and out of those, only two were dominant.

Three, by my count. NES, SNES, and Wii.


From 1991 to 1994 the SNES was outsold by the Genesis. That's not dominant.



Jumpin on 08 February 2013
J_Allard said:
Why are people arguing about the PS2 as if Sony is ever going to start giving us real numbers again lol.


Well, you're missing the fact that Sony still sells millions in countries like Indonisia, Ethiopia, Brazil, the Sudan, Honduras, Columbia, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Liberia, and Belize. They just haven't been tracked anywhere. The number for PS2 sales is a lot higher than just what the sales data suggests.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

Rogerioandrade on 08 February 2013

"How can Nintendo gamers even talk about other system failing?"

Ugh... actually, there are a lot more hate from Sony fans towards Nintendo than the opposite.

The real question is... ( regarding Vita struggle ) how can Sony gamers even talk about Nintendo systems failing ?

You know that both Vita and WiiU struggle aren´t just related to the systems itselves, both are great consoles, but the videogame market has been getting decreasing sales for quite some time. Casuals are flocking to tablets and smartphones and the ones who still stick to consoles are not willing to pay for expensive consoles anymore. Most dedicated gamers can´t afford more than one console, most have either one or two devices, only a few fortunate - mostly adults - have three consoles. Videogames are again becoming a niche market, companies and fans alike must awake to this reality. Probably we won´t see again consoles selling 100 million units