RolStoppable said:
colafitte said:
Well, point for you, with DS you were right. But because just 1 of 11 Nintendo consoles had better sales in year 3-4, even having a good year 5 we should now expect Switch to be the same?? What Switch has made to think it will replicate DS success? Why not compare it to Wii or 3DS?? (which in my opinion, its pace is far more similar). What happened to the shipments of those consoles? (don't need to put the numbers, don't worry, i suppose both know the numbers).
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It's more than one Nintendo console that had good sales beyond year 3, but you'll have to make the effort yourself to put all the numbers together:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/nintendo-historical-shipment-data-1983-present.701305/
The basis of any analysis should be that software sells hardware, so you look at the software support to get an idea how hardware sales will develop. If you do that, Switch isn't similar to Wii and 3DS. If you do that, you realize that the DS had a massive amount of quality games over the years. If you do that, you realize that all Nintendo consoles which had more sustained sales had a better software pipeline than those Nintendo consoles which didn't have a good software pipeline. If you do that, you realize that the same principle applies to PlayStation consoles as well, which is why the Vita was dead in the water in the West while it did somewhat okay in Japan where third parties kept supporting it.
You can split up software support into first party and third party. Regarding first party, the advantage Switch has over Wii and 3DS is that Switch is now the only Nintendo console. The decline of Wii sales correlates with the launch of the 3DS, because Nintendo's first party focused on the new console. Similarly, the 3DS had a rough time eventually, because most of Nintendo's top development teams worked on the Wii U. Now that 3DS development has fizzled out, Switch has a few years all to itself as far as Nintendo's attention is concerned. This means that all the system seller software that was split across two consoles in the past is now on one console for the first time since the NES era.
Regarding third party, Wii was despised by them. Wii got lots of games, but after 2010 third party releases were reduced to a trickle; this combined with the reduced first party releases is the real reason why Wii sales fell so hard in the later stages of its lifecycle. The 3DS had good third party support from Japan, but the console missed out mostly on the rising prevalence of indie games; this combined with the reduced first party releases hurt the console in the long run. Now while Switch is getting hardly any of the AAA third party games, it's sitting pretty with Japanese support and has become the darling of indie developers; neither of these two categories of third party support can be expected to dry up anytime soon, so the Switch library will continue to grow at a healthy pace in both quality and quantity. This kind of support is what drove DS sales, because the DS didn't get AAA third party games either; much of which is digital-only software today was released at retail for the DS.
So because Switch is much better set up in terms of first party and third party support in the long run, it will sell accordingly and therefore have a sales pattern closer to the DS or most PS consoles than to the Wii or 3DS. Plus price cuts and revisions are coming from fiscal year 3 onwards; those are two other important factors to stabilize hardware sales for a longer time.
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By parragraphs...
DS had very good games of course, but i would say that 3DS had too. Quality of software not always implies success for a Nintendo console. I love N64 and GC exclusives way more than Wii exclusives, in quantity and quality, and Wii still sold way more than both combined.
That could be true but is still yet to prove that it will correlate to any more success. Maybe right now, they had more focus with just one console, but because it was necessary too, because game production now cost way more time and resources, so i can say to you that that focus in Switch would only mean more time making the same good games, only just now they cost more (time and money) to do them.
The indie support is way overrated. No indie game has sell gangbusters in Switch (let's say more than 2 or 3 millions) and 3rd party support for Switch from Japan....well, 3DS had main Monster Hunter games and Yokai Watch games that were VERY succesful for 3DS in Japan. I'm not seeing anything like that for Switch in the near future coming from Japanese developers, at least, until now. As for the rest of 3rd party support, is as dead as ever, with late ports and disappointing sales. That has not changed from WiiU era.
So Switch is not better set up in terms of first and third party support not now, and not in the long run, based on any new annoucement until now. there is yet not proof Switch will reach DS pace of lasting so much. In fact, what i expect is Switch doing more like what we already seen during the first 9-10 months of 2018 happening in 2019 (even worse) until Animal Crossing and the true new Pokemon game launch. After that happens sales will start to stagnate as always happens with Nintendo home consoles. And i know you don't think so, but i'm pretty sure the buzz for next gen consoles and their lauch will affect Swich sales in the west in 2020.
Edit: In the end all of this is just subjective opinion. Both see the same glass with the same amount of water but you see it half full and i'm seeing it half empty.
Last edited by colafitte - on 03 January 2019
