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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Master analyst, Michael Pachter, predicts that Switch will not sell near Wii.

AJNShelton on 08 November 2021
Dulfite said:
Kakadu18 said:

You ignore the handhelds.

GB 1989

GBA 2001

NDS 2004

3DS 2011

With the exception of the GBA they all had a longer life than 6 years. The 3DS was actively supported until 2019 even. Their average with that is over 6 years.

Again appart from the GBA the length of their consoles often depends on it's success and the ones with a shorter than 6 years life were always low sellers.

I just find the mindset weird that some of the earlier posts in this thread shared, that all Nintendo systems have a 5 year life and therefore the Switch's life would also be 5 years.

Ignoring the GB Color is not a good thing to do. GBC could play hundreds of games the original Gameboy could not. It was its own generation based on that standard alone. It wasn't a New 3ds level upgrade with a few exclusives, literally hundreds of exclusives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Color_games

Sort by asc/dsc and you will see how many games were not Dual Mode compatible. GBC was its own generation, regardless of how Nintendo likes to label it (they join them up to make it look like they sold more, just like they will probably do years from now with Wii/Wii U).

Also, support doesn't mean much when the games are few and far between and heavily focusing (at least first party-wise) on "remasters" like the M&L ports of the DS games.

I don't know how accurate that GBC games list is accurate, cause it features Pokémon Gold/Silver and they were both Game Boy games (with GBC enhancements).

EDIT: Nevermind, they mentioned it in the "dual mode" column



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Mandalore76 on 08 November 2021
Dulfite said:
Kakadu18 said:

You ignore the handhelds.

GB 1989

GBA 2001

NDS 2004

3DS 2011

With the exception of the GBA they all had a longer life than 6 years. The 3DS was actively supported until 2019 even. Their average with that is over 6 years.

Again appart from the GBA the length of their consoles often depends on it's success and the ones with a shorter than 6 years life were always low sellers.

I just find the mindset weird that some of the earlier posts in this thread shared, that all Nintendo systems have a 5 year life and therefore the Switch's life would also be 5 years.

Ignoring the GB Color is not a good thing to do. GBC could play hundreds of games the original Gameboy could not. It was its own generation based on that standard alone. It wasn't a New 3ds level upgrade with a few exclusives, literally hundreds of exclusives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Color_games

Sort by asc/dsc and you will see how many games were not Dual Mode compatible. GBC was its own generation, regardless of how Nintendo likes to label it (they join them up to make it look like they sold more, just like they will probably do years from now with Wii/Wii U).

Also, support doesn't mean much when the games are few and far between and heavily focusing (at least first party-wise) on "remasters" like the M&L ports of the DS games.

That's an exaggeration.  Nintendo has not historically done this.  They never added the Gameboy Advance sales to Gameboy and Gameboy Color, even though the GBA was in the same family, sharing the "Gameboy" name, and has a cartridge slot for Gameboy and Gameboy Color games.  Similarly, the original DS has a cartridge slot to play GBA games, but Nintendo does not combine them to say GBA sold more than PS2 because we are now combining GBA and DS sales as one device history.  Even more closely related, the DS and 3DS are in the same family of system, and Nintendo does not count their sales together. 

Nintendo has never considered the Wii U to be a revision of the Wii.  It was always considered a successor to the Wii, advertising and marketing failures during its release aside.  The Wii crossed the 100 million consoles sold mark on it's own, without being propped up by hardware failure rates, a pro system revision, or combining its numbers with another family of devices etc.  What reason would they have to try and augment the Wii's lifetime sales by adding Wii U's 13.97m?  It would only move the Wii up 1 spot in lifetime hardware sales, passing only the original PlayStation.  And if Nintendo cared at all about passing the original PlayStation in sales total, they would have done so by just keeping the system on the market for 1 more year rather than discontinuing it and "trying" to make a success out of the Wii U.



Mnementh on 08 November 2021
Kyuu said:

2. Switch's horsepower was perceived to be just above PS360/Wii U levels. It turns out it was much more capable and closer to a middleground between those systems and Xbox One, and maybe PS4.

I feel like the power question is always misleading. Because the WiiU probably had more power than was used, but nobody bothered to really invest time, effort and money to make it work, because it was not seen as a system which made the investment back with game sales. For Switch on the other hand that works, which means with more effort studios are able to create "miracles". And that is not something specific for Switch and WiiU. More successful system especially in regards to game sales will result in games that make much more of the hardware available.

The second misleading thing here is the assumption of how much the horsepower influences success. This is a pretty clear lesson of game system history: the most powerful system seldom wins. Overall power has only a minor part in success. Much more important is how the perceived (subjective) value measures up. And that is strongly defined by the games on display. Switch could early on build a high perceived value, just because of how Breath of the Wild is a great game everyone wanted and still wants. More power doesn't automatically leads to more desirable games, which is why power has only minor influence on success.



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VAMatt on 08 November 2021
curl-6 said:
VAMatt said:

I'll bet $50 to charity that Switch will not outsell the Wii. Any takers?

I'll take that bet.

Too late.  I decided to withdraw that proposal a few days ago.  



PSwii60 on 08 November 2021

Lol, Pachter. Switch is in a different position than the Wii. Nintendo was willing to discontinue their support to the Wii because at the time, they had the 3DS. Switch is all by its lonesome self this time around. Hopefully, Nintendo continues their support for the system and milk it.

That said, Switch will easily take the Wii.



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dark_gh0st_b0y on 08 November 2021

Pachter is not the problem, it's those who reproduce his shit

not sure if there's any particular reason people are reproducing predictions of such a low credibility 'analyst'... personally I don't find it funny anymore



don't mind my username, that was more than 10 years ago, I'm a different person now, amazing how people change ^_^

The_Liquid_Laser on 08 November 2021
RolStoppable said:
Dulfite said:

I've had this discussion before with others. The DSI exclusives we're almost entirely shovelware, extremely low budget applications and games. There is no comparison between the quality and budget of those games to the GBC games. DSI was a revision, GBC was not.

Also, you should see how much money I spend on Nintendo first party a year, how many hours I play of their games a year, and my overall rankings of their games over the span of my gaming days. I absolutely adore the company and their games. I was even a shareholder until very recently.

If your on top, there is motivation to keep climbing to set a record. 

And just because you disagree with my prediction about Wii/Wii U doesn't mean you have to stoop to the level of insulting my ability to comprehend "how this all works." Why do so many conversations on this website turn into someone insulting the intelligence of another person? Why can't you simply disagree with me and leave it at that?

If you don't want people to challenge your intelligence, then you should stop making things up as you go.

Firstly, you came up with the standard of exclusive games define what is a revision and what is a new generation. When it's then pointed out that the DSi is in the same boat as the GBC, you change your standard to the quality and budget of the games matters. But if budget suddenly matters, then it can't be overlooked that Nintendo launched the GBC with Link's Awakening DX and Tetris DX as their first party lineup which are color versions of GB games. That should give you a big hint that the GBC was not a new generation, because Nintendo made no software investment like they do for a new generation.

Secondly, spending a lot of time and money on Nintendo games still doesn't excuse defending cherry-picked datasets by Nintendo haters.

Thirdly, you keep sticking to the argument that Nintendo combined GB and GBC sales to inflate the numbers when they have done no such thing for any other console of theirs, including those that have sold much worse than the GB/GBC. Respecting your prediction that Nintendo will eventually combine Wii and Wii U sales numbers would make as much sense as respecting The_Liquid_Laser's prediction for PS5 lifetime sales, who got mocked immediately to nobody's surprise.

We cannot have the expectation that all predictions will be treated the same way. There are predictions that are based on reasonable datasets and expectations, but there are also predictions that are not like that at all. Putting all predictions on equal footing would be disrespectful to those people who put in an effort to make an actual analysis. So when your question is why I don't respect your prediction, it's because it isn't deserving of respect and I don't want to be disrespectful to people who clearly do better than you.

I don't mind being mocked for my predictions.  In a few years, the threads will bumped up and I can mock those same people back.



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Kakadu18 on 08 November 2021
The_Liquid_Laser said:
RolStoppable said:

If you don't want people to challenge your intelligence, then you should stop making things up as you go.

Firstly, you came up with the standard of exclusive games define what is a revision and what is a new generation. When it's then pointed out that the DSi is in the same boat as the GBC, you change your standard to the quality and budget of the games matters. But if budget suddenly matters, then it can't be overlooked that Nintendo launched the GBC with Link's Awakening DX and Tetris DX as their first party lineup which are color versions of GB games. That should give you a big hint that the GBC was not a new generation, because Nintendo made no software investment like they do for a new generation.

Secondly, spending a lot of time and money on Nintendo games still doesn't excuse defending cherry-picked datasets by Nintendo haters.

Thirdly, you keep sticking to the argument that Nintendo combined GB and GBC sales to inflate the numbers when they have done no such thing for any other console of theirs, including those that have sold much worse than the GB/GBC. Respecting your prediction that Nintendo will eventually combine Wii and Wii U sales numbers would make as much sense as respecting The_Liquid_Laser's prediction for PS5 lifetime sales, who got mocked immediately to nobody's surprise.

We cannot have the expectation that all predictions will be treated the same way. There are predictions that are based on reasonable datasets and expectations, but there are also predictions that are not like that at all. Putting all predictions on equal footing would be disrespectful to those people who put in an effort to make an actual analysis. So when your question is why I don't respect your prediction, it's because it isn't deserving of respect and I don't want to be disrespectful to people who clearly do better than you.

I don't mind being mocked for my predictions.  In a few years, the threads will bumped up and I can mock those same people back.

Oh we'll see about that. Lol.



curl-6 on 08 November 2021

The specifics of Pachter's prediction make it even funnier:

"50 million if the price comes down to the curb" - Switch is now at 93 million while still costing $300 for the base model

"20 million a year ever probably not" - Switch sold over 28 million last year and is on track to top 20 million again comfortably this year

Last edited by curl-6 - on 08 November 2021

Oneeee-Chan!!! on 08 November 2021

Well I always thought he was kind of a trump.