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Forums - Nintendo - 80+ Million Switches Need to be Sold in 5 Years or it's a Failure

potato_hamster on 15 May 2017
Soundwave said:
potato_hamster said:

Who said it had to be less powerful? It just would need to be cheaper and most importantly, accept different cartridges.

Why would you do that? Accept different cartridges for the sake of locking out people from software? Lets get this straight first off -- Splatoon not being available to 3DS owners to play (65 million of them) is not a good thing. It doesn't make Nintendo more money. 

Imagine if 3/4 of McDonalds could not serve french fries, that's not a good thing for McDonalds. 

Imagine if Nintendo made a Wii U and a 3DS and made games like Super Smash Bros, or Super Mario Maker, or Mario Kart, or Hyrule Warriors, or Lego City Under Cover or Animal Crossing or Zelda, or any of the other games that are very similar, if not identical that required those who owned both platforms to buy two different copies of the game in order to play them on both platforms...

what a world that would be...



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Soundwave on 15 May 2017
potato_hamster said:
Soundwave said:

Why would you do that? Accept different cartridges for the sake of locking out people from software? Lets get this straight first off -- Splatoon not being available to 3DS owners to play (65 million of them) is not a good thing. It doesn't make Nintendo more money. 

Imagine if 3/4 of McDonalds could not serve french fries, that's not a good thing for McDonalds. 

Imagine if Nintendo made a Wii U and a 3DS and made games like Super Smash Bros, or Super Mario Maker, or Mario Kart, or Hyrule Warriors, or Lego City Under Cover or Animal Crossing or Zelda, or any of the other games that are very similar, if not identical that required those who owned both platforms to buy two different copies of the game in order to play them on both platforms...

what a world that would be...

That business model doesn't actually make Nintendo more money IMO. 

It's actually a pretty fucking stupid model when you think about it ... you have your best games (Breath of the Wild, Splatoon, etc.) locked off from your majority audience. There's no one in the entertainment business that operates like that. You can still sell multiple iterations of IP on the Switch, it'll just be Mario Kart 8 and 9 on Switch, instead of needlessly split apart on two hardware. 

If they need a lower price handheld, the Switch can easily accomodate that through a simple die-shrink of its chip. In fact you'd be spending more money needlessly on the R&D for a seperate chip. It just makes no sense to do. 

The old way was done that way because in the past it was neccessary. A DS or Game Boy could not run the console version of Mario Kart and a portable device could not have the same architecture as the console. 



potato_hamster on 15 May 2017
Soundwave said:
potato_hamster said:

Who said it had to be less powerful? It just would need to be cheaper and most importantly, accept different cartridges.

Why would you do that? Accept different cartridges for the sake of locking out people from software? Lets get this straight first off -- Splatoon not being available to 3DS owners to play (65 million of them) is not a good thing. It doesn't make Nintendo more money. 

Imagine if 3/4 of McDonalds could not serve french fries, that's not a good thing for McDonalds. 

More likely what Nintendo would actually do is introduce a higher end Switch in 3 years time or so, something that has a higher-end Tegra X3 and can occupy the $300 price point. The current Switch will be die-shrunk down to 16nm or 10nm, as be incorporated into various lower price models (ie: $229 basic, $179.99 Switch Mini, $149.99 Switch Home, etc). 2DS/3DS is phased out entirely by those models. Software is cross compatible between all Switch devices. 

That's far more likely. You want your software library to have access to the widest consumer base. 

That's far more sensible, consumer friendly and reasonable, I agree .

But this is Nintendo we're talking about.

They have a long, long history of making some awful, anti-consumer decisions in the past, and some horrible business decisions to boot. I'm not sure why everyone expects them to act reasonable and sensible now. I'm not saying Nintendo should do this, I'm just saying that Nintendo is out of touch and boneheaded enough to do this.



Soundwave on 15 May 2017
potato_hamster said:
Soundwave said:

Why would you do that? Accept different cartridges for the sake of locking out people from software? Lets get this straight first off -- Splatoon not being available to 3DS owners to play (65 million of them) is not a good thing. It doesn't make Nintendo more money. 

Imagine if 3/4 of McDonalds could not serve french fries, that's not a good thing for McDonalds. 

More likely what Nintendo would actually do is introduce a higher end Switch in 3 years time or so, something that has a higher-end Tegra X3 and can occupy the $300 price point. The current Switch will be die-shrunk down to 16nm or 10nm, as be incorporated into various lower price models (ie: $229 basic, $179.99 Switch Mini, $149.99 Switch Home, etc). 2DS/3DS is phased out entirely by those models. Software is cross compatible between all Switch devices. 

That's far more likely. You want your software library to have access to the widest consumer base. 

That's far more sensible, consumer friendly and reasonable, I agree .

But this is Nintendo we're talking about.

They have a long, long history of making some awful, anti-consumer decisions in the past, and some horrible business decisions to boot. I'm not sure why everyone expects them to act reasonable and sensible now. I'm not saying Nintendo should do this, I'm just saying that Nintendo is out of touch and boneheaded enough to do this.

They can do kinda that, but in much more logical way.

Instead of having an unneccessary new platform, what I think is more likely is they will keep the high price/low price model they have now. Right now it's Switch being the premium/expensive device at $300 and they are keeping the 2DS/3DS as the cheap model. 

I think they'll just keep that setup, but what will happen is a more powerful Switch with a future Tegra processor will come out in a few years to occupy the premium/expensive slot, and the current Switch will go through redesigns/die shrinks to have models in the cheaper tier. 2DS/3DS then is completely phased out. 

The market will accept this because they accept faster hardware revisions on portable centric devices like tablets, so that will just make sense to consumers. 



potato_hamster on 15 May 2017
Soundwave said:
potato_hamster said:

Imagine if Nintendo made a Wii U and a 3DS and made games like Super Smash Bros, or Super Mario Maker, or Mario Kart, or Hyrule Warriors, or Lego City Under Cover or Animal Crossing or Zelda, or any of the other games that are very similar, if not identical that required those who owned both platforms to buy two different copies of the game in order to play them on both platforms...

what a world that would be...

That business model doesn't actually make Nintendo more money IMO. 

It's actually a pretty fucking stupid model when you think about it ... you have your best games (Breath of the Wild, Splatoon, etc.) locked off from your majority audience. There's no one in the entertainment business that operates like that. You can still sell multiple iterations of IP on the Switch, it'll just be Mario Kart 8 and 9 on Switch, instead of needlessly split apart on two hardware. 

If they need a lower price handheld, the Switch can easily accomodate that through a simple die-shrink of its chip.

The old way was done that way because in the past it was neccessary. A DS or Game Boy could not run the console version of Mario Kart. 

Yet, that's the model they rocked for decades. In fact, since they made a handheld, this is the exact model they have deployed. I remember when I got my original gameboy, I had to go out and get a new copy of Super Mario Land even though I had Super Mario Bros for my NES. Why should we expect much different now?

Besides, who says they have to lock these games away? They just need to put them into a different form factor. People would just have to buy two copies of the game if they want to play it on both platforms, just like they've done for decades.



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outlawauron on 15 May 2017
Azzanation said:
I dont think thats how it works.
Eg-Making profit on 20m sales beats selling 80m and barely making profit.

I'd argue otherwise for the long term viability of your place in the market. Brand has much stronger presence and value with 80m users vs 20m.



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Soundwave on 15 May 2017
potato_hamster said:
Soundwave said:

That business model doesn't actually make Nintendo more money IMO. 

It's actually a pretty fucking stupid model when you think about it ... you have your best games (Breath of the Wild, Splatoon, etc.) locked off from your majority audience. There's no one in the entertainment business that operates like that. You can still sell multiple iterations of IP on the Switch, it'll just be Mario Kart 8 and 9 on Switch, instead of needlessly split apart on two hardware. 

If they need a lower price handheld, the Switch can easily accomodate that through a simple die-shrink of its chip.

The old way was done that way because in the past it was neccessary. A DS or Game Boy could not run the console version of Mario Kart. 

Yet, that's the model they rocked for decades. In fact, since they made a handheld, this is the exact model they have deployed. I remember when I got my original gameboy, I had to go out and get a new copy of Super Mario Land even though I had Super Mario Bros for my NES. Why should we expect much different now?

Besides, who says they have to lock these games away? They just need to put them into a different form factor. People would just have to buy two copies of the game if they want to play it on both platforms, just like they've done for decades.

The reason they did in the past is not neccessarily because they wanted to "force" people to have to buy different hardware. I'm sure Nintendo wold have loved to have 100 million players be able to play Mario 64 for example ... it would have maybe doubled or tripled the sales of the game. 

It just wasn't possible then. You could not have the architecture/hardware neccessary for the higher end Nintendo experiences where their majority audience (portables) was. I'm sure they would have liked to have had Mario Galaxy on DS too. 

Unified platform in the long run will actually make Nintendo more money than the old model. 



potato_hamster on 15 May 2017
Soundwave said:
potato_hamster said:

Yet, that's the model they rocked for decades. In fact, since they made a handheld, this is the exact model they have deployed. I remember when I got my original gameboy, I had to go out and get a new copy of Super Mario Land even though I had Super Mario Bros for my NES. Why should we expect much different now?

Besides, who says they have to lock these games away? They just need to put them into a different form factor. People would just have to buy two copies of the game if they want to play it on both platforms, just like they've done for decades.

The reason they did in the past is not neccessarily because they wanted to "force" people to have to buy different hardware. I'm sure Nintendo wold have loved to have 100 million players be able to play Mario 64 for example ... it would have maybe doubled or tripled the sales of the game. 

It just wasn't possible then. You could not have the architecture/hardware neccessary for the higher end Nintendo experiences where their majority audience (portables) was. I'm sure they would have liked to have had Mario Galaxy on DS too. 

Unified platform in the long run will actually make Nintendo more money than the old model. 

So because it is technically possible now, we're supposed to expect Nintendo is just going to stop with a business model that works for them for decades. I fully agree that such as decision wouldn't be very consumer friendly, but people need to remember that Nintendo isn't actually very friendly to their consumers and never have been. They are driven by profit above all else. If they think they stand to make more by making a handheld that doesn't accept Switch cartridges, then they're probably going to do that.



Pyro as Bill on 15 May 2017
potato_hamster said:

Yet, that's the model they rocked for decades. In fact, since they made a handheld, this is the exact model they have deployed. I remember when I got my original gameboy, I had to go out and get a new copy of Super Mario Land even though I had Super Mario Bros for my NES. Why should we expect much different now?

Besides, who says they have to lock these games away? They just need to put them into a different form factor. People would just have to buy two copies of the game if they want to play it on both platforms, just like they've done for decades.

Did blowing into the cartridge not make it work?



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potato_hamster on 15 May 2017
Pyro as Bill said:
potato_hamster said:

Yet, that's the model they rocked for decades. In fact, since they made a handheld, this is the exact model they have deployed. I remember when I got my original gameboy, I had to go out and get a new copy of Super Mario Land even though I had Super Mario Bros for my NES. Why should we expect much different now?

Besides, who says they have to lock these games away? They just need to put them into a different form factor. People would just have to buy two copies of the game if they want to play it on both platforms, just like they've done for decades.

Did blowing into the cartridge not make it work?


Pyro, for you I'll use pictures, because it doesn't seem to be coming across clearly.

Can this cartridge:


Fit in this device without modification?



and play as any other gameboy game would?