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Forums - Sales Discussion - How Nintendo can challenge Sony's dominance in Europe

Nintendo should get PES and revive this franchise. Tremendous potential for this franchise in Europe.



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Red dead redemtion, FC, GTA, FF and so on, on first day of release and with the best visuals. If Nintendo can deliver that, it will be Successfull in europe.



Perhaps by making a system with processing power a bit more worthy of 2018, also adding a bit more than 32GB of memory, also by not forgetting that for generations it made dedicated home consoles and that spitting on the face of home consoles fans is not the way to go to win said fans' hearts plus a few more things I can't think of right now.

Perhaps then it would be a more serious competitor to Sony. Of course I can't speak for all the other Europeans but I for one would have purchased such a system cause I got this weird notion that what defines gaming is the relationship between the gamer and the screen he looks at on which the game takes place and NOT the environment around said gamer but what do I know, right?

Of course in Japan the Switch is very successful so I guess the Japanese are more concerned by the environment around them rather than the screen in front of them, hence their preference for a mobile system rather than a home system.



RolStoppable said:

This thread delivered many more baffling responses than I expected. While I did say in the original post that I would delve into a deep analysis, that was never going to happen. That's because the numbers show that Sony's dominance in Europe is a myth, therefore the premise is wrong, therefore there's no problem that needs to be addressed.

The original PlayStation launched over 22 years ago and since then Sony has beat Nintendo in consoles sales by less than 1m units per year on average. That's nowhere close to dominance when the size of the European market is considered.

Some may say that the presented data is skewed because handheld consoles are included, but since Switch is the successor to both Nintendo's home console and handheld console lines, it is mandatory for handhelds to be included. Otherwise it would be impossible to make any sort of competent and credible analysis of the European market.

The Switch's current hardware price (€330 in almost all countries that use € as currency) prevents it from harnessing the majority of Europe's handheld market at the moment, but it's a given that the price will go down eventually, so in the future Nintendo can fully exploit the monopoly they have obtained. Someone like fatslob may laugh at this thread (again, I don't believe that he believes what he says) because the PS4 sold 6m in the timeframe that Switch sold 3.9m, but so far Switch has sold first and foremost to the people who buy Nintendo home consoles, so Nintendo's full strength has yet to materialize in the European market.

And yes, Nintendo's home consoles may not have sold well in Europe when they were global failures, but that's a completely irrelevant point when Switch is already established as a global success.

What?  You asked a question and didn't really care what the responses were?  If I wanted this type of treatment, the I would go to Youtube.

And whether you agree or disagree with my statement, please comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe.



The Switch may be the first chance at it. Flexibility and portability will be huge in the long term for Europe.



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RolStoppable said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

What?  You asked a question and didn't really care what the responses were?  If I wanted this type of treatment, the I would go to Youtube.

And whether you agree or disagree with my statement, please comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe.

I do care about the responses, but I expected more people to say something along the lines of "Sony is actually not as dominant in Europe as I thought. Interesting."

Many people ignored to look at the numbers - which basically means that they didn't read the original post at all - and proceeded to post their standard responses to European sales.

Sounds alot like the NPD thread aswell



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RolStoppable said:
Barkley said:

The inclusion of handheld consoles isn't an issue for the purposes of using the data in relation to the Switch, the inclusion of 9 Nintendo systems in comparison to 5 PlayStation systems certainly does skew the data however. The Switch is a single system.

Average EU Sales per Sony System: 31.1m
Average EU Sales per Nintendo System: 21.2m (not including Switch)

Now only taking the 5 BEST systems from Nintendo (DS, 3DS, Wii, GBA, GB/GBC) we get an average of 30.2m, still lower, and with advantages in Nintendo's favour such as the PS4 still having a lot of sales to come, and Nintendo's mistakes and failures being wiped away, unlike the remaining Vita.

I don't see the point in spinning the data to arrive at more favorable results for one company over the other when none of that spinning will result in a noteworthy change to Switch's prospects.

I mean, I could respond to your post by pointing out that Sony didn't have to deal with the economical circumstances of the late 1980s and early 1990s where the average disposable income was lower while the average cost of electronics was higher. Additionally, the EU with its lack of tolls on goods between its member states wasn't a thing in the early days of Nintendo either. Those circumstantial factors notably push Nintendo's average down.

Disregard the above paragraph though. It's just an example of where we could be going in this thread, but it ultimately wouldn't matter because it won't have an impact on Switch's chances. If it isn't clear what I mean, whether we take the 21.2m or the 30.2m average you have presented, Switch is going to outperform the average either way, so it's pretty much a useless metric.

The most important point that this thread makes is that Europe is not Sonyland. Nintendo has sold plenty of consoles in Europe.

Your most important point at the bottom is fine. Nintendo has sold plenty of units of hardware and in terms of simply total gaming hardware sold, Sony is leading but couldn't be described as dominant. In terms of number of unique customers however that may be a different story.

The issue is when the data of 9 systems combined vs 5 systems combined, without averaging, is used as a means to determine or predict Switch's sales potential or markets fanbase size. You say it's a useless metric, yet a purpose of this thread seems to be to use the data to make some kind of assumption about the Switch, as seen by the need to accommodate it here. "But since Switch is the successor to both Nintendo's home console and handheld console lines, it is mandatory for handhelds to be included. Otherwise it would be impossible to make any sort of competent and credible analysis of the European market."

The figure (186.5m & 169.93m) cannot be used to determine the number of people who are PlayStation users vs Nintendo Users in Europe. As a devout Nintendo fan would have purchased 9+ systems, as opposed to a PlayStation fan purchasing 5+ systems, simply due to the number of systems available.

So any conclusions on total hardware sold, yeah that's perfectly fine. Directly comparing those numbers (186.5m & 169.93m) to determine the size of the fanbase in that region or the sales potential of a singular system, not fine.



RolStoppable said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

What?  You asked a question and didn't really care what the responses were?  If I wanted this type of treatment, the I would go to Youtube.

And whether you agree or disagree with my statement, please comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe.

I do care about the responses, but I expected more people to say something along the lines of "Sony is actually not as dominant in Europe as I thought. Interesting."

Many people ignored to look at the numbers - which basically means that they didn't read the original post at all - and proceeded to post their standard responses to European sales.

I looked at the numbers I just didn't interpret them the way you did.  Even if you combine handheld and home consoles together, Sony is leading in 3 out of 4 generations, which is how I think about it.  I don't look at the mean of all of the numbers, because there was one generation where Nintendo came out way of ahead of Sony and 3 others where Sony came out modestly ahead.  That one generation skews the average if you simply average them all together.

It's kind of a moot point though, since I agree that Switch will dominate in generation 9, even in Europe eventually.  But the way you are presenting things can legitimately be interpreted more than one way.



RolStoppable said:
Barkley said:

Your most important point at the bottom is fine. Nintendo has sold plenty of units of hardware and in terms of simply total gaming hardware sold, Sony is leading but couldn't be described as dominant. In terms of number of unique customers however that may be a different story.

The issue is when the data of 9 systems combined vs 5 systems combined, without averaging, is used as a means to determine or predict Switch's sales potential or markets fanbase size. You say it's a useless metric, yet a purpose of this thread seems to be to use the data to make some kind of assumption about the Switch, as seen by the need to accommodate it here. "But since Switch is the successor to both Nintendo's home console and handheld console lines, it is mandatory for handhelds to be included. Otherwise it would be impossible to make any sort of competent and credible analysis of the European market."

The figure (186.5m & 169.93m) cannot be used to determine the number of people who are PlayStation users vs Nintendo Users in Europe. As a devout Nintendo fan would have purchased 9+ systems, as opposed to a PlayStation fan purchasing 5+ systems, simply due to the number of systems available.

So any conclusions on total hardware sold, yeah that's perfectly fine. Directly comparing those numbers (186.5m & 169.93m) to determine the size of the fanbase in that region or the sales potential of a singular system, not fine.

If that's your issue, then you shouldn't use an average to determine the ceiling for Switch, but rather pick the highest selling console from the list.

Well yeah, for a system's potential ceiling that would be the way to go.

But really I'm also saying there's more than one way to look at what success and "dominance"is. There's metrics other than Total Hardware sold, such as Number of regular unique customers, Average system sales, etc.

From a company's point of view, higher average product sales is better, after all they'd rather have a single system sell 40m units, than 2 different systems sell 20m each.

A win (or being close) simply by releasing more products for your fans to purchase than the competition doesn't allow a lot of conclusions to be drawn.



RolStoppable said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

What?  You asked a question and didn't really care what the responses were?  If I wanted this type of treatment, the I would go to Youtube.

And whether you agree or disagree with my statement, please comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe.

I do care about the responses, but I expected more people to say something along the lines of "Sony is actually not as dominant in Europe as I thought. Interesting."

Many people ignored to look at the numbers - which basically means that they didn't read the original post at all - and proceeded to post their standard responses to European sales.

I somehow doubt that you truly thought people would say that