In regards to the NS being in the middle of its life to gauge how accurate this is the is one key aspect and that is the monopoly on one half of the market, when Nintendo last had this or near enough the times between successors increased compared to other platforms for example the NES/Famicom had seven years until the SNES and GB had nine years until the pro-model in the GBC and twelve until its successor with the GBA. Being a hybrid NS can effectively leverage this monopoly to squeeze out more years in its active life regardless of what the competition is doing as it runs on its own merits, a longer run not only means more time to better develop the concept for the successor while letting tech further advance for it to be executed as well as prepare the first year line up but it also allows their recent commitment to spend like $4 billion on things like expanding development teams, infrastructure and so on to be more in place when the next platform is arriving.

Don't be surprised if we don't have a successor until 2025 even.

This really drives home how off base folks are who try to claim Switch will follow the Wii's path. Since the beginning, Switch's trajectory has been fundamentally different than the Wii's, as its a fundamentally different platform.

“that exceeds what we previously considered to be a conventional hardware lifecycle.”
That was a line that really stood out to me from Furukawa.

I kind of think of a conventional hardware lifecycle as being 6-7 years.
Maybe eight years for a very successful one with a long lifespan is moving beyond a conventional hardware lifecycle.

With hardware starting to reach a level of 3D performance that’s getting harder to noticeably beat, and foundries starting to slow down the rate at which they achieve improvements at higher costs I think there’s reason to start shifting towards thinking of eight year cycles.

It’s the statement that made me feel less certain of my September-November 2024 prediction for the Switch successor and got me wondering about a potential March 2025 launch.

5-6 years has been typical for Nintendo's systems in terms of launch to replacement.

Personally, I'd be fine with Switch being replaced anytime from holiday 2023 onwards, I just feel that before that would be premature. I'd like to get as much out of my system as possible before I have to buy a new one, and I'm quite happy with the Switch from a performance perspective and don't feel the need for an upgrade yet.

NSW already has six of the top twenty and seven of the top thirty best selling Nintendo games ever and it is only four and a half years old.

@ShadowLink93 That's some great stuff. Thanks for the effort.

RFA and BotW2 are definitely going to enter Nintendo's top 30. Maybe even Pokémon BD/SP.

Yeah Ring Fit, BD/SP, BOTW2, and possibly Legends Arceus and Mario Party Superstars should all break the all time top 30.
That would mean 12 of the top 30 would be from a single platform, which is pretty impressive, and that's just games we know about, there could easily be multiple 16 million plus sellers not even revealed yet.

Do you guys think the Top 30 will be entirely games with over 20 million copies sold at the end of the Switch's lifetime? I think it's a possibility, though probably not likely. I imagine there will still be more 20m sellers on Switch though. SMP is definitely going to reach it and maybe Ring Fit as well. BOTW 2 likely will. Could maybe see BDSP and Legends reaching 20m and probably Gen 9 as well.