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Forums - Sales Discussion - Why are Nintendo Switch sales peaking much later than other Nintendo consoles?

Pyro as Bill on 22 February 2021
Leynos said:

Wii also only had one thing going for it. A novelty. Novelties wear off. The switch has a practical use for its selling point. It's convenient having the ability to be both docked and handheld. As HDTVs became more common and Smartphones the less sense Wii made. Switch released just before the cloud gaming boom and it's more practical than cloud gaming IMO. I'm not saying this is the sole factor. Just an additional one to what has already been mentioned.


Yeah it's great that the novelty of motion controlled sports, fitness, dance, party and mini-game compilations has finally worn off thanks to smartphones and HDTVs.



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Mnementh on 22 February 2021
Shadow1980 said:

Two reasons:

1) It probably took some time to gain more traction instead of having an initial rush because it was a new concept and Nintendo was just coming off of the Wii U.

What? We were always joking about the double helix pattern in the PS4/Switch launch aligned sales comparison articles. Because they started at different times of the year they gained the lead at different times, but that they kept repeating that was because for the initial years Switch and PS4 basically sold on the same curve. Do you really think PS4 needed time to gain more traction? Because it was a new concept and people were burned coming off the PS3? I think both consoles, Switch and PS4 started off equally strong (and PS5 seems to follow that sales curve again).

Shadow1980 said:

2) This guy right here:

Had there been no pandemic, Switch sales were likely going to be down or at best roughly flat in 2020. Hardly anybody was expecting any appreciable year-over-year gains, many if not most were expecting it to be down (at least in the U.S.), and nobody expected it to do as well as it did. Demand for consoles increased due to the pandemic and still remains elevated because of the general increase in spending on at-home entertainment, but once enough people are vaccinated and the numbers of cases are sufficiently down to where everything can safely reopen, I expect demand for the Switch to decline as pent-up demand for things like movie theaters and restaurants results in a spending spree on away-from-home events and entertainment.

I don't think that many were expecting it to be down, most people actually thought it could peak in 2020. Really, take a look:

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/240375/bet-your-vg-which-year-will-the-peak-year-of-the-switch/

This was mid 2019, and the majority was betting on 2020, the amount of VG$ is bigger than any other option combined. So I don't know how you can think that most were expecting it to be down (yes, you restricted it in parantheses to the US, which makes no sense because how would people expect a 2020 peak year without the US, seeing how europe is Nintendos weak spot and Japan was very fast to adopt the Switch and probably is first to peak).

Also we can compare the effect of the pandemic between systems, and see that it does about 10%-15%. So that is not nothing and it did slow down the decline of PS4 and Xbox One, but to explain Switch's more than 40% growth you need much more than the pandemic. It is more like the pandemic slightly supported an already existing momentum.

I also don't see your prediction of sales suddenly collapsing because people can go back to museums and bars coming true. It seems not unthinkable, that 2021 is actually Switch's peak year (and nearly everyone will lose the above-linked bet). You need to look at the games, not extrinsic factors to see the momentum. Like Salnax did.



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

my greatest games: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

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bets: [peak year] [+], [1], [2], [3], [4]

Mnementh on 22 February 2021
haxxiy said:

1. The pandemic
2. The pandemic
3. The pandemic

It doesn't take a lot of effort to look precisely at which month of 2020 sales and internet trends of the Switch started to skyrocket.

If predecessor interest was a factor then the Wii and the DS would have their sales pattern swapped around.

The month it skyrocketed was the one with a certain game with villagers and animals in it, right?



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

my greatest games: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

10 years greatest game event!

bets: [peak year] [+], [1], [2], [3], [4]

scottslater on 22 February 2021

This notion that Covid is the reason why the Switch exploded is hilarious. Sure, I'm sure it helped, but if anything it hurt it more than helped as you couldn't even find hardware to buy to begin with. In fact, the 4 week holiday shopping period (Black Friday) was down YoY (5,994,846 in 2019 vs 5,874,064 in 2020), so again, I think Covid hurt it more than helped it overall.

The sales of the Switch in 2019 were clearly an indicator that 2020 was already going to be a monster year and all indicators are that 2021 is going to be another monster year.

Last edited by scottslater - on 22 February 2021

Nintendo with the Switch:

scottslater on 22 February 2021
Chrkeller said:

For me the console design is just brilliant. We have two units in the house (one for the kids), with a dock on two different TVs. I love the flexibility of being able to move to another room, depending on what the wife/kids want to do. As a result I am playing and buying far more Switch games compared to ps4. Brilliant design.  It just gets used a lot.  

Edit

I think Nintendo is also doing an excellent job of couch coop, something Sony/MS have been doing a poor job of.  Mario Odyssey, Mario 3D World, Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin 3, Animal Crossing, Smash, Kart, Party, etc.  Multiplayer is also driving up my use of the Switch.  Playing family games on the weekend via couch coop is something I can't really get elsewhere.  Not with the variety of offerings the Switch has.

This, this is why the Switch is performing so well. Many didn't realize they wanted these features.

We have 4 in our house (2 Switches and 2 Lites) with 3 docks so we can play anywhere. The Xbox and two gaming PCs just collect dust anymore because the ability to play a game anywhere whenever you want just makes it a much more clear decision on which to spend time with. Oh, wife and kids want to watch a movie, okay, I will just pick up my Switch and play for a little bit in the bedroom. Oh, road trip to the in-laws, I will bring my Switch. Try doing that with an Xbox/PlayStation/PC (disclaimer, I will never own another Sony product).

And the couch coop is a really big thing that the other gaming giants are missing, not everyone wants to play CoD online. The Switch is our go to for party games when we have visitors.

Last edited by scottslater - on 22 February 2021

Nintendo with the Switch:

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The_Liquid_Laser on 22 February 2021

There are several reasons Switch is peaking later, and most of them have been given: strong software, diverse software appealing to different people, etc....  However, there is another big reason that no one has mentioned yet.

Switch started Generation 9 on the early side.  Most gamers in 2017 were not ready to buy a Switch yet.  In 2017 the PS4 was still going strong, so all of those PS4 gamers really had no need for a new system. In 2018, PS4 had a fantastic year for software (and Switch's software was kinda meh until the end of the year).  But in 2019-2020, that was about the time people were ready to move on to another system. 

A similar thing happened with the Genesis.  It launched at a time when the NES was selling extremely well, and so it didn't sell a whole lot during the first couple of years.  However, around the time the SNES was released, the Genesis started to really sell and ended up being tough competition for the SNES in NA and Europe.  The Genesis had a slow start because it released early, but once Generation 4 got going, so did Genesis sales.  The Switch is doing the same type of thing.

Switch sales in 2017 were actually pretty low compared to what they are now.  The years 2017 and 2018 were actually Switch's slow period.  They seemed high at the time, because most people on this site had very low expectations for the Switch and also had no idea just how high it would peak.  But now that we see how well the Switch is actually selling, it should be clear that people needed a couple of years before they bought a Switch.  Think back to 2017.  It had a lot of fantastic software like Zelda, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8, Odyssey, etc....  All of those games are still selling well.  All of those games are still selling the Switch.  If those 2017 games have that kind of selling power, then maybe 2017 was on the low side.  People just weren't ready yet.  They needed to be done with the PS4 before they could be ready to enjoy the Switch.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 22 February 2021

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Switch Will Be #1 All Time
Zelda Will Outsell Mario (Achieved)
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haxxiy on 22 February 2021
curl-6 said:
haxxiy said:

It doesn't take a lot of effort to look precisely at which month of 2020 sales and internet trends of the Switch started to skyrocket.

If predecessor interest was a factor then the Wii and the DS would have their sales pattern swapped around.

Yeah, no, the pandemic is just one  contributing factor of many, not at all solely responsible.

Yeah no, the pandemic is the sole contributing factor, others were not responsible at all.

See how your line of argumentation works?

I wonder how smart you felt when typing your reply...



 

 

 

 

 

Bofferbrauer2 on 22 February 2021
Shadow1980 said:
Dulfite said:

While I don't think 2020 would have been AS good for Switch, it would have absolutely been up YoY still. Animal Crossing was massive on the 3ds and there is no reason to think Covid alone is what made people hyped for that game. Also, if Covid-19 hadn't happened, many games that weren't able to be released in 2020 would have been released, further helping hardware sales. On top of that, the tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of total humans that lost jobs during Covid would have felt more secure in spending money on unnecessary entertainment like video games.

It's easy to claim in retrospect that the Switch would have still been up regardless. But prior to the pandemic, nobody was expecting massive growth, with many expecting declines and even optimistic predictions assuming relatively modest gains at best. For example, NPD's Mat Piscatella predicted the Switch would be down YoY in the U.S., and in the NPD 2020 full-year prediction thread on ResetEra, the average of all predictions was just under 6.4M, and the best prediction was 6.9M. It ended up selling about 9M.

Animal Crossing was a known factor in January 2020, and people made their predictions accordingly. While it was going to be a system-seller, it might not have moved quite as many units (or sold quite as well in and of itself) had there been no pandemic, and losses elsewhere in the year could have negated those gains. Instead of 1M in March, the Switch might have only sold, say, 750k, but had it dropped even 5% overall for the April-Dec. period, the Switch would have been about flat overall for the year. A 10% drop for that period would result in it being down. And every indication prior to the pandemic was that the Switch was passing its peak, with YoY declines imminent. Getting to 7M would have required either March hitting 1M even without the COVID bump to assist AC (an unlikely outcome) or sales for the remaining 11 months of the year to have been at least slightly up. Nobody was expecting anything like a >10% bump in baseline sales (for reference, the Switch's sales for the May-Oct. period were up 76.8% YoY last year in the U.S., way beyond what anybody could have guessed).


Also, it's obvious that the pandemic had significant impacts on consumer spending. There have been actual professional and journalistic articles talking about the increase in spending on at-home entertainment. Google should help you find articles talking about the general increase in demand for consoles and at-home entertainment in general during the pandemic, but here's some good places to start:

https://www.ipsos.com/en-th/looking-escape-younger-people-more-likely-say-entertainment-costs-rose-covid-19
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/research/media-consumption
https://news.cision.com/simon-kucher---partners/r/new-study--gamers-around-the-world-are-spending-more-time-and-money-on-video-games-during-the-covid-,c3166869
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54813841
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/demand-for-new-consoles-to-drive-gaming-industry-growth-past-pandemic-8211-analysts-62299438

And it may sound counter-intuitive, but video games appear to be recession-proof, so even when unemployment is up there appears to be no negative impacts on spending on video games. Sales of game consoles (both home and handheld) actually increased in the U.S. during the 2007-09 recession. While a lot of people have been hurt by things like the late 00s recession or the pandemic, most were still gainfully employed and had money to spend. An unemployment rate of 20% means that 80% of people are still employed, and those that were unemployed due to the pandemic, well, they were still getting income (plus in the U.S. we got those stimulus checks).

Without the pandemic, the Switch wouldn't have sold anywhere close to what it did without the pandemic. You don't get the kind of growth in baseline sales it saw under any kind of normal circumstances. Deep price cuts sometimes produce comparable growth, but rarely anything of that level, especially if the baseline was already healthy to begin with, and no single game has ever done anything like that by itself. The Switch's growth in 2020 was due to outside factors, which is corroborated by the PS4 & XBO as both also clearly demonstrated increased demand, at least as long as stock held out. The pandemic resulted in artificially increased demand for game consoles. Simple as that.

Yes, many thought the Switch would be flat or even down. They did the same as you did in posts before: look back how the Nintendo consoles peaked early and extrapolated from there.

What they didn't look at were the sales during the first 2 months of 2020, during which the Switch was outselling 2019 by a comfortable margin already, leading by over 250k after only 7 weeks. Of course, nobody expected AC:NH to become such a juggernaut, but the signs that the sales would be up in 2020 without Covid are all there already before the shit hit the fan.

Of course Covid helped; I mean, many who suddenly lost their job or had much more time at hand needed something to keep occupied (that's mainly why it's resistant to crisis), but pinning most of the rise on Covid is just wrong. Switch would have sold 24M+ even without the pandemic the way the things were going, and would probably have had a bigger holiday title without the virus delaying so much in terms of game development.



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The_Liquid_Laser on 22 February 2021
Shadow1980 said:

The PS4 & Switch having the same curve was a coincidence, and at the regional level was only true in the U.S., and even then it didn't last.

The PS4 had a relatively flat sales curve in the U.S., at least for its first five years (for non-Nintendo consoles, Gen 8 was the flattest generation). Meanwhile, the Switch's baseline in 2018 was essentially flat, with that year being up as a whole from 2017 only because of a big YoY jump in holiday sales that year (deals like the then-new MK8DX bundle probably helped with that). But in 2019 the Switch experienced a decent amount of growth even prior to the Lite's release in September. Why the growth after the relative flatness in 2018 in the absence of any obvious stimulative factors? Increased attention could have been a factor. Something had to be causing sales to grow (and it wasn't games, because all its big hitters were Q4 releases). But despite that growth, it appeared to have stopped in early 2020. Then the pandemic hit.

Super Mario Party, Pokemon Let's Go, Smash Bros, and NSMB U all released within a 4 month window during late 2018-early 2019.  All of those games are in the Switch's top 10.  Yeah, it actually was games causing Switch sales to grow.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 22 February 2021

curl-6 bet me that PS5 + X|S sales would reach 56m before year end 2023 and he was right.
My Bet With curl-6

My Threads:
Master Thread, Game of the Year/Decade
Switch Will Be #1 All Time
Zelda Will Outsell Mario (Achieved)
How Much Will MH Rise sell?
My Bet With Metallox

TruckOSaurus on 22 February 2021

I'll repeat what I say in these kind of threads all the time. People have got to stop pretending Switch had a slow start. The first three years of the Switch were incredibly close to first three years of the PS4, which is considered to have sold tremendously well out the gate (rightly so too). So Switch came out swinging and then turned into an incontrollable beast in 2020.



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